LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



%p* - @opJjw# fo t 

Shelf .RC-3 64 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ffllGI^OBES AND QQeN, 



v 

i. H. Of^eUTT, JV1. D., PJH. D. 



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• • « lllusfpaiea .... 



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For Sale by the Author, 

Owatonna, Minn. 

Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 50 cents. 

1894. 







Copyright, 1894, by 
I. H. ORCUTT. 



Electrotyped and Printed by 

"The Eagle," 

Delano, - Minn. 



PREFACE. 

The purpose of this little book is to present in a plain 
and practical manner, some of the most interesting and 
valuable scientific knowledge of this decade, and to 
give to the public the results of a number of important 
experiments that have never before appeared in print. 
An effort has been made to reach the present limits of 
knowledge, and to give only such scientific truths as are 
capable of demonstration. A few of the facts presented 
and some of the conclusions reached may seem incred- 
ible to many whose opportunities for study and experi- 
ment have been somewhat limited. Great care has been 
taken to avoid exaggeration and misleading statements. 

It is presumed that the reader has at least a limited 
knowledge of physiology, so that he may in some degree 
realize the all important fact that there is no earthly 
treasure so valuable as a sound mind in a sound body. 
Wide spread increase of the use of alcohol and tobacco, 
and the consequent alarming increase of certain diseases, 
of crime, pauperism, idiocy, insanity, and suicide, make 
it certain that something ought to be done in order to 
check the onward march of these foes to the race, and 
thus avert an impending crisis. All intelligent persons, 
especially the young, should know the scientific facts 
which have to do with the health, progress, and welfare 
of present as well as future generations. 

Nearly two years of time, and many hundreds of dollars, 
would not have been spent in the production of so small 
a book, had it not been firmly believed that a clear un- 
derstanding of truth is both the foundation and corner 



stone of refrom and of correct personal living. If this 
brief treatise be generously accorded a place in this 
foundational work, leading some into well-defined paths 
of right-thinking and correct living, the author will be 
content. 

Grateful acknowledgement is made for the kind aid re- 
ceived from many sources. Rev. S. A. McKay, A. M., 
read the manuscript and proof, making many valuable 
suggestions. The writer's friend and co-worker for over 
seven years in the Agricultural College of South Dakota, 
Robt. F. Kerr, A. M., has copied the manuscript and 
otherwise assisted in getting it ready for the press. 
Earl Douglass, John Fansett, H. F. Craig, and many 
other former pupils have assisted in performing 45 
series of experiments, each of which usually occupied one 
half day. Still others have rendered a like assistance. 

Nearly all the illustrations are either sphygmographic 
traces or pen drawings by the author. A few of the 
latter are intended to assist in teaching truth, not being 
exact reproductions of microscopic views. 

July 16, 1894. i. H. 0. 



>\ 



Miei^OBES A^D JVIEJM. 



CHAPTER I. 



MICROBES. 

During the past few years a new and very 
valuable science has come into being and is 
receiving an increasing amount of attention. 
Originating mainly in France, it has gradu- 
ally extended over the whole civilized world. 
This new science is known as Bacteriology, 
and is now generally taught in universities, 
progressive colleges, and medical schools. It 
treats of the lower forms of life of which we 
have knowledge, especially of disease germs, 
and those germs which cause fermenta aon 
and all forms of decomposition. The word 
bacteria being somewhat restricted in its 
meaning, is, in popular writing, being gener- 
ally displaced by a better term, that of 
microbe. This latter term is applied to all 
minute living beings. Some microbes are 
known to be plants and others animals, but 
in the majority of cases scientists are in doubt 
as to their proper classification. Whether 



8 MICROBES AND MEN. 

they be plants or animals is of little conse- 
quence, provided we are able to learn some- 
thing of their life history. It is certain that, 
with few exceptions, they subsist like animals, 
in that they do not create complex organic 
substances out of inorganic matter, but live 
by destroying what has already been formed 
directly by plants, or indirectly by animals. 
Their life work is, therefore, as truly destruc- 
tive as that of the higher animals, who them- 
selves live upon the 
stored-up energy of low- 
er forms . In the process 
oxygen is consumed and 
carbonic acid gas is 
thrown off, along with 
other waste products, 
just the same as with 
Fig. i-Microbes of malaria man and other animals. 
highly magnified. Microbes which cause 
disease are as truly parasites as are ticks and 
tapeworms. When a person has malarial 
fever he is as certainly being destroyed by 
animals as if attacked by fleas, wolves or 
lions. A wound may be changed into a dan- 
gerous ulcer by microbes as well as by mag- 
gots. 

We may well believe that there is very much 
going on about us, and within us, which we do 
not perceive with our unaided senses. Until 




MICROBES. 9 

recent years it was believed by many that the 
lower forms of animal life, such as fleas, flies, 
bugs, worms, and even mice and rats, were 
brought into being by the decomposition of 
organic matter. The celebrated YonHelmont, 
-who lived early in the seventeenth century, 
says: — "It is true that a ferment is sometimes 
so bold and enterprising as to form a living 
being. In this way lice, maggots, and bugs, 
our associates in mise^, have their birth 
either within our bodies or in our excrement. 
You need only close up a vessel full of wheat 
with a dirty shirt and you will see rats engen- 
dered in it, the strange product of the smell 
of wheat and the animal ferment attached to 
the dirty shirt/ ' These purely fanciful notions 
have not been able to stand the light of mod- 
ern research, especially when the microscope 
is used which so largely increases our powers 
of vision. 

All living things are reproduced by their 
kind. This is as true of microbes as it is of 
men. Disease germs have parents as truly as 
any of the more familiar animals. Such germs 
would not inhabit our bodies if their parents 
had not injured some one else and prospered. 
We furnish them shelter, warmth, and food 
till each one becomes the progenitor of a host, 
then send them out, by the aid of air, water, 
food, and clothing, to find lodgment in the 



10 MICROBES AND MEN. 

bodies of our friends and neighbors, where 
their life history is repeated. There are 
thousands of species of microbes and they are 
of different sizes, shapes, colors, and "disposi- 
tions, "just as we find differences among the 
higher forms of plants and animals. In fact, 
so far as numbers are concerned, the invisible 
world has its millions where the visible world 
has its thousands. 

Each microbe is a single cell of a substance 
called protoplasm. This substance appears 
very much like a small particle of the white 
of an ^gg* There are, however, a few colored 
species of these minute creatures. Blood spots 
on vegetable food, "blood water," "blood 
rain," "red snow," "blue milk," and "blue 
pus," are simply changes in the original, 
caused by the presence of colored microbes. 

The microbe which causes la-grippe is said 
to be only one sixty-thousandth of an inch in 
diameter, requiring 216,000,000,000,000 to 
make a cubic inch, or thousands of millions 
to make a thimbleful. The average size of 
microbes is about one three-thousandth of an 
inch in length,requiring about 30,000,000,000 
to make a cubic inch. It seems perfectly 
proper to say that they are inconceivably 
small. 

These invisible creatures are found every- 
where, swarming in the food we eat, and in 



MICROBES. 11 

the water we drink, in the air we breathe, and 
in the ground upon which we walk. It is es- 
timated that each person takes into his lungs, 
in the air that he breathes, an average of 
300,000 microbes per day. Rain water at 
Paris contained 64,000 in each quart, while 
the water from the river showed 4,500,000 
in each quart before it reached the city, and 
12,000,000 after it had passed through it. It 
is stated on good authority, that there are 
about 4,000,000 of these low forms of life in 
each tumblerful of Lake Michigan water 
which is furnished to Chicago through the 
waterworks. As large as these numbers may 
seem, impure milk often shows a much greater 
proportion in a similar quantity. Since heat 
is very destructive to all kinds of microscopic 
life it is evident that it is a safe plan always 
to boil suspected milk and ordinary drinking 
water before using either. 

These low forms of life come into being 
either by budding, or by fission. In the for- 
mer case a bud may be seen growing out of 
the side of a mature microbe. It takes food 
independently and grows until it becomes as 
large as the parent and then it sends out 
buds producing another generation. In 
the case of fission the microbe is seen to con- 
tract in the middle like a figure 8 until it di- 
vides into two parts, each of which grows 




12 MICROBES AND MEN. 

till it is as large as the parent, when the pro- 
cess is repeated so long as the conditions for 
growth are favorable. In unfavorable con- 
ditions the cell, which is the complete microbe, 
contracts into a small 
germ, spore, or seed with 
a covering, and this en- 
ables, it to resist most de- 
structive agencies to a 
remarkable degree. Some 
survive long periods of 
boiling or roasting while 

Fig. 2— Reproduction by ° . 

budding and fission. others are not killed in a 
loaf of bread which has been fairly well baked. 
Disease germs may remain in clothes, old 
rags, or wall paper, for years and still cause 
disease when they find lodgement in bodies 
not able to resist their encroachments. As 
the sediment from an overflowed stream, or 
the bed of a marsh or lake, becomes dried, 
spores are produced by the drying of the mi- 
crobes and are caught up and carried by the 
air as fine dust. It takes a powerful micro- 
scope to detect the presence of these spores, 
so minute are they. Natural growth of trees, 
or rows of cultivated trees between a house 
and land subject to overflow, form a valu- 
able protection,for thereasonthat they arrest 
the flight of nearly all these dangerous spores. 

It is very important that every responsible 



MICROBES. 13 

person should have some knowledge of mi- 
crobes and their influence for good or ill. 
With even a limited knowledge of the habits 
of disease germs much sickness could be avoid- 
ed and many premature deaths. Every one 
ought to know that such diseases as barbers' 
itch, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, small-pox, 
yellow fever, diphtheria, hydrophobia, con- 
sumption, cholera, leprosy, measles, mumps, 
and many others, are caused by microbes and 
are easily communicable to other people. 
Many of the diseases of domestic animals, 
such as lumpy -jaw of cattle and glanders of 
horses, are caused by germs and may be com- 
municated to man. The affected parts of all 
such diseased animals should be burned, not 
buried. It should also be well known that 
microbes are sometimes found in the saliva 
of healthy persons which, if introduced into 
the blood of another person will multiply rap- 
idly and cause death. It is no safer to be bit- 
ten by a man than by a dog. 

It is estimated that a person,sick with con- 
sumption, will expectorate 40,000,000 disease 
germs per day. This many live active mi- 
crobes, deposited every day of his existence 
upon the streets, sidewalks, lawns, and floors, 
and liable to be conveyed by hands, clothing, 
and air into our foods, drink and lungs, is a 
subject which is not pleasant to contemplate. 



14 



MICROBES AND MEN. 




Fig. 3 — Microbes of con- 
sumption highly mag- 
nified. 



Is it any wonder that a 
seventh of all deaths 
among adults in America 
is due to some form of 
this disease? Everything 
coming' from a person 
affected by a germ dis- 
ease should be immedi- 
ately disinfected or 
burned. 

The spores of disease germs may remain 
quiescent for years and then revive and de- 
velop rapidly when placed under favorable 
conditions. This will account for most of the 
isolated cases of scarlet fever and other di- 
seases, which appear from time to time. Old 
rags or clothing, which have been infected, 
new clothing from "sweat shops" where filth 
and contagion are common, may be the 
means of conveying such 
disease if brought into 
contact with susceptible 
persons. Typhoid fever 
germs, diphtheria germs, 
and other varieties, are 
very often thrown out in 
slops to be washed into 
our drinking water, or 
dried and blown about by 
the wind, thereby spreading possible disease 




Pig. 4. — Microbes of ty- 
phoid fever highly mag- 
nified. 



MICROBES. 15 

and death through out a whole neighbor- 
hood. 

It has been discovered that oysters take up 
disease germs, especially the bacilli of typhoid 
fever, from the mud and ooze in which they 
live, and thus communicate them to man, if 
eaten raw. In the canning of fruits, meats, 
and other foods, the process kills and excludes 
all microbes. This is the secret of the pre- 
servative power of the whole operation. The 
process was learned by the accidental discov- 
ery of some canned figs in the ruins of Pom- 
peii. The fruit was still well preserved 
although nearly two thousand years had 
elapsed since the cans were sealed. Microbes 
cannot live without moisture, therefore noth- 
ing rots which is kept dry. The value of an 
ointment or a surgical dressing is in propor- 
tion to its ability to keep out or destroy the 
microbes which are being constantly deposi- 
ted in an open wound by the air. 

Every person has more or less natural re- 
sistance against the invasion of disease germs, 
some being able to resist even the germs of 
small-pox so completely that they never con- 
tract the disease, however often they may be 
exposed to it. Perfectly healthy people who 
live strictly according to well known laws of 
health are seldom destroyed by disease germs. 
Anything which lessens the vitality of the 



16 MICROBES AND MEN. 

body lessens the vital resistance to these de- 
stroying forces. Bad air, "worry, overwork, 
lack of work, filth, improper food, over-eat- 
ing, tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, opium, 
chloral, cocaine, or excesses of any kind, tend 
to weaken the vital powers and that increases 
our chances of being injured or destroyed by 
the dangerous germs which are continually 
entering our bodies by means of air, food or 
drink. Anything which lessens vitality 

INCREASES THE DEATH RATE FROM GERM DI- 
SEASES. 

When an active microbe or a spore 
finds a favorable location for growth and de- 
velopment, it at once begins to produce buds, 
or to divide, and the little beings commence 
to increase at an incredible rate. It is believed 
that some disease germs are able to double in 
number every twenty minutes. Such being 
the case, one microbe would become two in 
twenty minutes; four in forty; and eight in 
sixty, and so on, reaching the incomprehen- 
sible number of 4,722,365,482,669,645,- 
213,696, in twenty-four hours, provided that 
all conditions were favorable. If it be possi- 
ble for one microbe to have so many descend- 
ants, as expressed in the above calculation, in 
twenty-four hours, another similar period 
would show a correspondingly large increase, 
always providing that they retain their vital- 



MICROBES. 17 

ity and have a sufficient food supply. At the 
end of the second day, the number of microbes 
would have to be expressed by the product of 
the large number given above multiplied by 
itself. Worlds would not hold all of them- 
These figures are simply incomprehensible, but 
this very fact may help us to understand 
why people sometimes die so suddenly after 
being attacked by cholera, cholera morbus, 
and other germ diseases. We can also com. 
prehend the reason why fresh meat or dead 
bodies tend to decompose so rapidly under 
certain conditions, especially those favorable 
to the development of microbes. 

These low forms of life are the great disor- 
ganizes of nature, decomposing everything, 
whether plant or animal, which has been 
alive. They decompose the building and the 
builder. They reduce all complex substances 
which have been produced directly or indirect- 
ly from the mineral kingdom, back to their 
original condition. This statement includes 
those food substances which have be^i only 
partially changed or decomposed while pass- 
ing through the bodies of animals and ani- 
mal-like plants. Plants are not nourished by 
manure and other organic compounds until 
they are reduced to their mineral components 
by the microbes. Take all the germs from a 
field and ordinary crops will not grow. They 



18 



MICROBES AND MEN. 



are the important links in "being's endless 
chain' ' formed and unformed, where, in the 
economy of nature, not an atom of matter is 
created or destroyed. 

Many of the facts already given have been 
discovered by cultivating the microbes, or 
breeding, feeding, and caring for 
them, as we care for other 
"stock.' ' A "culture," the name 
given to each separate experi- 
ment, is made by placing a few 
microbes in a substance which 
they can use as food. Here they 
multiply until the food is ex- 
hausted or until the substance 
becomes so foul, from the waste 
matter thrown off by the active 
microbes, that they are poisoned. 
A culture may be made in a test- 
tube, a barrel or a large vat. 

Suppose an experimenter wish- 
es to study the cattle disease 
known as anthrax, or splenic fe 
ver. He finds a few microbes tin 
der his microscope which he be 
lieves to have come from an animal dead with 
that disease. A culture is made by putting 
the microbes into a test-tube partially filled 
with some food substance. Here they multi 
ply. Some of these young disease germs are 



Fig. 5.— Cul- 
ture o f A n 
thrax germs 
in gelatine. 




MICROBES. 19 

injected into another ani- 
mal which subsequently 
dies with anthrax. A little 
blood from the last vic- 
tim is used in making an- 
other anthrax culture. A 
part of this culture is used 
in inoculating another 

Fig. 6. — Microbes of An- . i i • i 1 -i i 

thrax, greatly enlarged animal which alSO devel- 

ops into a fatal case of anthrax. These ex- 
periments are repeated till there can be no 
doubt regarding the cause of the disease. In 
a similar way disease germs are being discov- 
ered and studied. 

Microbes devour their food as truly as do 
beasts of prey, whether that food be an ap- 
ple, a dead cat, or some of the tissues of alive 
man. 

They also throw off waste products as ex- 
crementitious matter, the same as all the 
higher forms of life. This refuse is poisonous 
to animals, in the same way that the excre- 
ment of one animal is poisonous to other ani- 
mals. These poisons are found in all decom- 
posing substances, such as tainted meat or 
fish, rotting fruit or vegetables, rancid butter, 
or old cheese. 

Panum first showed that a poisonous pro- 
duct, resembling snake venom and such vege- 
table alkaloids as morphine and strychnine, is 



20 MICROBES AND MEN. 

developed from the putrid fermentation or de- 
composition of meat and similar substances. 
This product is called septine. It is the ex- 
crementitious matter thrown off by active 
microbes, and is so poisonous that in some 
cases one-fifth of a grain will kill a dog. 

E.L. Trouessart, inhis" Microbes, Ferments 
and Moulds, " says: — " Panum's researches 
have been recently resumed by Selmiand Gau- 
tier who have extracted from corpses and pu- 
trefying organic matter a certain number of 
poisonous substances greatly resembling veg- 
etable alkaloids, and termed by them pto- 
maines. The action of ptomaines may be 
compared to that of strychnine. Injected in- 
to the blood, even after the removal of every 
living microbe, the ptomaines produce fever, 
rigors, vomiting, diarrhoea, spasms, torpor, 
collapse, and finally death. It is probable 
that in some cases of poisoning by tainted 
meat or fish their poisonous properties are 
due to the presence of ptomaines. 

But in all cases these ptomaines are shown 
to be the product of putrid fermentation, 
which is always effected in dead bodies by 
special microbes. Here the ptomaines are due 
to the work of the microbes of putrefaction, 
and are made by them, just as alcohol and 
the carbonic acid of alcoholic fermentation 
are made by yeast, at the expense of the su- 



MICROBES. 21 

gared liquid in which they live and multiply. 

Direct experiments show that when septine, 
from which every microbe has been removed, 
is injected into the human subject, it produces 
feverish disturbances, but only causes death 
when introduced in considerable quantities.' ' 

In germ diseases, the poisonous substances 
which are thrown off by the microbes seem 
to do much more harm than the pests them- 
selves. If a culture be made of chicken 
cholera germs and the resultant mass be then 
filtered through porcelain so as to separate 
the germs from their excrement (ptomaine 
or septine) and some of the poison be injected 
into a healthy fowl, it will become intoxi- 
cated and remain so for a few hours. If the 
amount be increased it will die from excessive 
intoxication. If on the other hand, the germs 
alone are injected into the system of a vigor- 
ous fowl, they will multiply and the bird will 
die with the cholera, or in other words, is 
poisoned to death by the waste products 
thrown off by the germs which rapidly de- 
velop within its body. In such diseases as 
cholera, scarlet fever, and diphtheria, the 
subjects are both poisoned and devoured by 
the microbes which cause the disease. This 
fact accounts for the many sudden deaths 
from such diseases. It explains the sick head- 
ache and certain other symptoms in consti- 



22 MICROBES AND MEN. 

pation, for it is known that in the develop- 
ment of large members of microbes the 
ptomaines are absorbed into the system from 
the intestines. 

Each species of microbe selects a very few 
substances which it always uses as its par- 
ticular foods and it will not thrive upon 
other forms- more than animals will upon 
food not adapted to them. These voracious 
little creatures eat about five thousand times 
more food in proportion to their size than 
does the average man. 

In all the lower forms of life, just as in the 
higher forms, each species has its "personal 
odor," arising from the waste products which 
are thrown off in various ways. These odors 
are so characteristic that is not difficult to 
distinguish, by the sense of smell, whether we 
are in the presence of decomposing fruits, 
vegetables, or meats. In fact, most people 
are able to name the particular varieties of 
fruit or vegetable that are in process of de- 
cay. The microbes which cause the excessive 
sweating and offensive odor of the feet of 
some people, or the red sweat in the armpits, 
give off their characteristic vile odors when 
cultivated in a test-tube. If a person has a 
marked odor it is either caused by the pres- 
sence of microbes or is the result of uncleanli- 
ness. Microbes and all other creatures which 



MICROBES. £3 

live upon animal food, usually have a much 
stronger "personal odor" than those which 
live upon vegetable diet. 

The decomposition of all vegetable and 
animal substances is called fermentation — a 
much broader meaning of the term than is 
generally supposed. "Microbes are ferments; 
they excrete the products of ferment ation." 
The two words are similar expressions, and 
mean that the substance under process of 
decay or change is being eaten by microbes 
and that the new product is the waste which 
has been excreted or thrown off during the 
transforming process. These waste products 
may be inorganic compounds, such as car- 
bonic acid gas or ammonia, or they may be 
organic compounds more or less like those 
found in the excreta of all the higher forms of 
life. If we make aculture from grape juice or 
apple juice, which contain large quantities of 
water, or one from grain soaked in water, 
the microbes (yeast) will eat the crushed 
fruit, or soaked grain and throw off two 
principal kinds of excrement — alcohol and 
carbonic acid gas. The gas will escape into 
the air, thereby causing the frothing or foam- 
ing of the mass, while the alcohol, which has 
an affinity or liking for water, will remain in 
solution. 

Whenever fruit or grain is prepared for the 



24 MICROBES AND MEN. 

reception of the microbes a culture is made, 
whether the preparation be in a test-tube, 
cider-barrel, wine-cask, or beer-vat. In either 
case the food is as certainly intended for con- 
sumption as it would be if given to any other 
kind of ' 'stock. " If the fermentation be com- 
plete the food value of the article will entirely 
disappear. The liquid will contain some 
coloring matter and a greater or less per cent 
of excrement, commonly called alcohol. This 
latter is in no sense a food, but a product 
which is poisonous to all animals. 

The flavors and odors of wines and other 
liquors depend largely upon the "personal 
odor" of the species of microbe which causes 
the fermentation. If a bushel of corn be fed 
to pigs and another to hens, the fact is well 
known, that distinct * 'personal odors" will 
be imparted to the waste products in either 
case, the food consumed being exactly alike. 
It is no less true in the case of the lower 
forms of life. The odor and flavor of tobacco 
depend largely upon the particular species of 
microbe which develops in it during the 
sweating process. 

It has recently been discovered that the 
flavors and odors of the liquors and tobaccos 
of certain localities, which command such 
high prices, can be produced anywhere by 
using the right kind of microbe. Port wine 



MICROBES. 25 

or Havana tobacco can be had by importing 
and propagating the kinds of microbes whose 
excrement has the desired "personal odor," 
instead of importing the articles themselves. 

In closing this chapter it seems best to 
recapitulate briefly in order to fix in mind a 
fcw of the important points which it would 
be well to remember. Microbes are the 
smallest living creatures of which man has 
any knowledge. They live under the same 
laws — eating, growing, and multiplying — as 
do all the higher forms of life. Scientists class 
some microbes with plants and others, such 
as those which cause fever and ague, with 
animals. 

Microbes live like animals by taking food 
into their bodies. This food is disorganized 
or transformed and waste products are 
thrown off which are poisonous to animals. 
Every thing which has had life is eaten and 
thus destroyed by them. The waste pro- 
ducts or excrementitious matter thrown off 
by microbes are called ptomaines or sep tines 
— those from the decomposition of animal 
matter seeming to be more poisonous to man 
than those from the decomposition of veget- 
able matter. Not all microbes cause disease 
and not all "diseases are caused by microbes. 

Ordinary fermentation is the destruction of 
grains and fruits by microbes. A beer- vat or 



26 MICROBES AND MEN. 

a wine-vat is as truly a culture as is the test- 
tube of the experimenter, in which he feeds 
and breeds cholera germs or other microbes. 
In the case of the beer-vat culture the mi- 
crobes are bred for the excrement, while the 
test-tube culture is made for the purpose of 
studying the microbes. 

Alcohol is a ptomaine or septine and, when 
taken pure (absolute alcohol), is as deadly as 
the ptomaines of chicken cholera or putrid 
meats, although a larger quantity is needed 
to produce the same effects. 

The different flavors and odors of liquors 
are imparted to them by the microbes that 
caused the decomposition of the fruit or 
grain. When fermentation is complete the 
grain or fruit has been entirely consumed by 
the germs, only colored water and excrement 
(alcohol) remaining. 

A barrel of beer does not contain as much 
nourishment as a loaf of bread, but contains 
enough ptomaine (absolute alcohol) to kill, 
within ten minutes, thirty-five men who are 
not accustomed to its effects. 



CHAPTER II. 



BLOOD AND MICROBES. 

The blood is the most important and most 
abundant fluid of the body. "The life of the 
flesh is the blood. " About one-ninth of the 
entire weight of the body, or from twelve to 
eighteen pounds, is ' 'running flesh. " The 
blood is a liquid flesh containing only five 
per cent more water than is found in muscle. 
It is at once the provider and purifier of the 
whole body, receiving the digested part of 
the food, carrying it to every tissue, and re- 
moving the worn-out particles of matter. It 
contains the material out of which new 
tissues are made, and old ones are repaired. 
Blood appears red because it is packed full of 
little coin -shaped discs called red corpuscles. 
These are about one three-thousand-two 
hundredth of an inch in diameter and one 
fourteen-thousandth of an inch thick, requir- 
ing nearly one hundred and fifty billions to 
make a cubic inch. Each drop of blood con- 



28 



MICROBES AND MEN. 



tains about 200,000,000 of these red cor- 
puscles. 

It is stated there are one hundred and 
seventy-three cubic inches of corpuscles in the 
blood of each healthy man. This estimate 
gives to each individual something like 25,- 
000,000,000,000 of these little " workers." 
On an average, once in every two minutes, 
"from the cradle to the grave," each one goes 
to the lungs and secures a load of oxygen, 
which it gives up to some of the hungry 
tissues while it is on its rapid flight through 
the body. Any thing which interferes with 
their appointed work, even for a moment, 
jeopardizes the vitality and endangers the 
life of the individual. » 

For every three or four hundred red cor- 
puscles, there is 
found a white 
corpuscle, ma- 
king seventy- 
five or eighty 
billion in the 
blood of each 
person. The 
white cor- 
puscles, when 
at rest, appear 

Fig. 7.— Red and White Corpuscles to be tranS- 
and Microbes of Swine Plague. .. 11 

Highly magnified. parent balls m 




BLOOD AND MICROBES. 



29 



which are seen a number of drak specks. 
The white corpuscles are larger than the red, 
and possess the power of spontaneous move- 
ment, contracting and expanding, throwing 
out finger-like projections from different parts 
of their surfaces and as quickly withdrawing 
them. These movements are very similar to 
those of the minute animal, the amoeba. 
They do not move so rapidly through the 
small blood-vessels as do the red corpuscles. 
They have power to change their shape and 
to pass out, something 
like a worm, through the 
blood-vessels, and, after 
creeping about awhile 
through the tissues, to go 
back again, by a new 
road, into the blood. 
They appear in large Fig.s.-Amoeba. various 
numbers in wounds, ab- fo ™Ltiy a tm1aSeT. a1 ' 
scesses, and ulcers where they are called "pus" 
or "matter/ ' In certain diseases they seem 
to be very much more numerous than when 
the patient is in good health. For many 
years scientists have been advancing various 
theories in regard to the special office of the 
white corpuscles. These theories have been 
both wise and otherwise. After years of the 
most painstaking investigation and research, 
with the most approved instruments and ap- 




30 



MICROBES AND MEN. 




pliances, one of the greatest of the many 
wonderful discoveries of the nineteenth cen- 
tury has recently been made— the white 

CORPUSCLES EAT MICROBES. 

We now see why they do not move so rap- 
idly through the blood-vessels as do the red 
corpuscles, whose office is 
to make all possible haste 
to reach the lungs in or- 
der to secure a load of 
life-giving oxygen for the 
use of the famishing tis- 
sues. We are also able to 
understand why these 
white corpuscles are so 
numerous in certain di- 
seases. The defensive army has been increas- 
ed to help repel the invading forces of the en- 
emy which threaten to overpower the whole 
nation — king, soldiers, and all, if the invaders 
are not all destroyed. The white corpuscles 
appear in wounds and ulcers to eat, and thus 
to destroy, the microbes which are being con- 
stantly deposited by the air, If these invad- 
ing and greedy microbes are not destroyed, 
they eat the exposed flesh and throw ofl 
waste material which is absorbed by the 
bloodvessels and blood-poisoning is the result. 
When a wound is kept free from microbes the 
white corpuscles (pus) do not appear. It is a 



Fig. 9 — "White corpuscles 

eating microbes. 

(Showing amoeba-like 

movements.) 



BLOOD AND MICROBES. 



31 



grave mistake to believe that a running sore 
purifies the system. It does no more in that 
direction than does a battle to purify an army. 
A thimbleful of pus contains more than a bil- 
lion of these valiant "soldiers" — a number 
greater than the combined armies of the 
world. 

Microbes feeding upon dead matter do not 
have to contend with these living forces, call- 
ed vital resistance. When 
a living being is attack- 
ed by these dangerous 
hordes, there ensues a 
terrible struggle for su- 
premacy and life is en- 
dangered. The invasion 
is resisted by the existing 
corpuscles and by the new 
ones, also, which are gen- 
erated to assist in the deadly combat. In this 
struggle many lives are lost on both sides. If 
the microbes conquer, all is lost — the faithful 
army and that for which they fought. Wheth- 
er the white corpuscles are aided or hindered 
by the afflicted individual or by his ph3 r sician, 
they make a heroic fight to "save the union." 
If they vanquish the enemy there may be 
enough vitality left to rebuild the constitu- 
tion. 
It is very interesting to witness, under a 




Fig. 10. — White corpus- 
cles at rest, digesting 
microbes. 



32 MICROBES AND MEN. 

microscope, such a heroic struggle going on 
in a drop of blood. Our faithful defenders, 
the white corpuscles, are not only willing to 
meet the living enemy in hand to hand con- 
flict, but they willingly rush into the poison- 
ous excretions of the microbes outside of the 
blood-vessels (as in the case of an open wound 
or on the membrane in diphtheria) and there 
sell their lives as dearly as possible, by filling 
their bodies, sometimes even to bursting, with 
the rapidly increasing invaders. 

The white corpuscles are the most numer- 
ous and brave, the most simply clad and 
armed, the most efficient and faithful, defend- 
ing army the world ever knew. We survive 
from day to day because of the eternal vigi- 
lance of the white corpuscles, who stand ever 
ready to fall upon and devour these enemies 
of our peaceful and much loved anatomy. It 
is only when the invaders are to a greater or 
less extent successful, that we suffer sickness 
or death from these daily inroads. 

Much may be done both to help or hinder 
the work of these loyal friends in their daily 
warfare for our well-being. Like nearly all 
living beings they need a constant supply of 
proper food, pure water, and fresh air. ^ If 
these necessary things are withheld, or im- 
proper and harmful things are provided, ^ to 
that extent will the white corpuscles be im- 
peded in their work. 



BLOOD AND MICROBES. 33 

The physical system, of every human being, 
is a government inhabited by an innumerable 
host of citizen soldiers, each individual of 
whom has inherited a marvelous degree of 
loyalty as well as skill and bravery. These 
warriors are seldom overcome, when the gen- 
eral government is in good order and gives 
them a fair chance. 

The3 T ,indeed,war a good warfare, and, if suf- 
fering and death go forth at noonday, it is al- 
ways because of a misgovernment of the sys- 
tem for which every warrior corpuscle is 
ready to sacrifice his life. Sometimes the un- 
wise commander compels his army to camp 
where it is constantly flooded with such 
quantities of sewerage, (beer and cider), that 
the warriors are soaked and surrounded with 
poison, to such an extent that they are scarce- 
ly able to distinguish between friend and foe, 
much less to contend successfully with the 
enemy. Thousands of observations and many 
experiments on the lower animals, prove, by 
analogy, that a person is much more liable to 
suffer from germ diseases when not properly 
fed than when he is. "The pestilence follows 
the famine and death follows close upon the 
track of a glutton.' ' 

Debility from lack of proper exercise, or ex- 
haustion from overwork, tend in the same 
direction. Sleeping and working in poorly 



34 MICROBES AND MEN. 

ventilated rooms are common ways of failing 
to provide the warrior cells with the neces- 
sary supply of fresh air. Thousands of cases 
of consumption are traceable to this cause < 
alone. Anything and everything which 

LESSENS VITALITY INCREASES THE DEATH-RATE 
FROM GERM DISEASES. 

The warrior cells maybe overcome by a too 
numerous or too poisonous an enemy, or they 
maybe more or less exhausted by a long con- 
flict with one kind of an enemy and be unable 
to resist successfully a new one when intro- 
duced. People in malarial districts are more 
subject to the fatal ravages of cholera than 
those from more healthful localities. It is al- 
ways wise to keep an army in the best pos- 
sible fighting trim when facing a deadly foe. 

When a ship, laden with a share of all the 
precious things of this world, is attacked by 
a band of pirates, the captain knows full well 
that the safety of his cargo, crew, and him- 
self, depends upon the energy and strength of 
his fighting men. We would not form a very 
high opinion of his abilities if, under such cir- 
cumstances, he were to fill the air which his 
faithful men had to breathe with noxious 
gases and the drinking water with stupefying 
and deadly poisons. The tobacco and alco- 
hol user may be able to get a few grains of 
comfort out of the above figure ! 



BLOOD AND MICROBES. 35 

If a large number of a certain kind of mi- 
crobes be placed tinder the skin of a guinea 
pig an abcess will be formed in about twenty- 
four hours. A careful microscopic examina- 
tion will reveal the fact that the contents of 
the abcess is largely composed of white cor- 
puscles which are well filled with microbes, 
and that the microbes have not been allowed 
to spread over the entire body, thereby de- 
stroying the life of the animal. But if the 
guinea pig be stupefied with chloral, alcohol, 
or some other narcotic poison, after the mi- 
crobes have been placed under the skin, the 
result will be quite different. In the latter 
case the white corpuscles will be made unfit 
for active service, the microbes will increase, 
and death will be the result. 

If two small pieces of sponge be filled with 
disease germs and each one be placed under 
the skin of a healthy guinea pig and one ani- 
mal be kept in a stupefied condition with chlo- 
ral, alcohol, or something similar, this will be 
the result. The stupefied animal will soon 
die, and every part of its body will be filled 
..with myriads of microbes, while the piece of 
sponge will be nearly as clear as when placed 
under the skin. The other animal will not 
show signs of sickness but the piece of sponge 
will be filled and covered with "matter," 
which the microscope will show to be an in- 



36 



MICROBES AND MEN. 



numerable host of white corpuscles, more or 
less filled with microbes. 

Recent investigators have discovered an- 
other startling fact regarding the white cor- 
puscles. Alcohol, and other narcotic poisons, 
not only stupefy the corpuscles and render 
them unfit for service, but act in such a man- 
ner on the nerves and blood-vessels as to pre- 
vent their searching the tissues in pursuit of 
the lurking enemy. That is, the alcohol acts 
as a key to lock the fort while the invading 
army destroys the surrounding country. 

It is also the office of the white corpuscles 
to eat, and thus destroy, particles of waste 
matter which may be 
found in the blood, such 
as parts of the red cor- 
puscles which have gone 
to pieces. When a tad- 
pole is changing into a 
frog, the white corpuscles 
accumulate in the tail, 
and after- 
wards build themselves into the new struct- 
ure of the frog. This gives us something of 
an idea of the importance of the work they 
are commissioned to carry forward within 
our own bodies. 

It is estimated that during a prolonged de- 
bauch the alcohol destroys at least 100,000,- 




Figll. — White corpuscles 

eating fragments ofbro- consume it 
ken-down tissues. 



BLOOD AND MICROBES. 37 

000,000 of the red corpuscles, the fragments 
of which must be picked up and devoured by 
the white corpuscles. 

Over twenty years ago the celebrated Rus- 
sian experimenter, J. Dogiel, said that alcohol 
rapidly causes the amoeba-like movements of 
the white corpuscles to cease, and that at a 
certain concentration it dissolves both the 
red and white corpuscles. Thus alcohol not 
onl\ r makes the white corpuscles unfit for effi- 
cient work, by depriving them of a proper 
amount of oxygen, food, and water, and mak- 
ing them stupid, but very greatly increases 
the amount of work to be done by them. 

The foregoing statements make it very 
plain that the white corpuscles are a very im- 
portant factor in our earthly existence, and 
that the use of alcohol (and tobacco) must 
greatly increase the amount of sickness and 
death from germ diseases. 

In epidemics of germ diseases, such as 
cholera and yellow fever, the average death 
rate is about ten times greater among the 
habitual users of alcohol than among total 
abstainers. The use of alcohol and tobacco 
adds each year several hundreds of thousands 
to the total of the world's mortality. 

RECAPITULATION. 

Each person has from twelve to eighteen 



38 MICROBES AND MEN. 

pints of blood, which is the provider and puri- 
fier of the whole body. In this amount there 
are about 25,000,000,000,000 of red, and 
80,000,000,000 of white corpuscles. The 
red corpuscles are coin-shaped and carry 
oxygen from the lungs to all parts of the 
body, where it unites with the prepared food, 
supplying heat and vitality. 

The white corpuscles ^re somewhat larger 
than the red, can assume a great variety of 
forms, and move about independently like 
some of the one-celled animals. Their life 
work is to destroy the disease germs and 
other microbes which are constantly being 
introduced into our bodies. 

Anything which interferes with the vitality 
and activity of either the red or white cor- 
puscles increases sickness and the death-rate. 
Alcohol and other narcotic poisons make the 
white corpuscles less active, thus allowing 
the disease germs to increase, adding greatly 
to the sum of the world's mortality. 



CHAPTER in. 



THE CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 

The lowest forms of plants and animals, 
such as microbes, are composed of a sub- 
stance called protoplasm. Life is always 
associated with protoplasm, which is some- 
times spoken of as the ' 'fundamental basis of 
life." Each speck of protoplasm, as in the 
case of microbes, can feel, move, grow (by 
taking food), and reproduce its kind. Each 
individual speck is called a cell, which means 
a portion of matter, not an inclosed hollow 
space as one of the air-cells of the lungs. 
Every living being begins its existence as a 
single cell — the lower forms never getting be- 
yond that state. In the higher forms of life, 
such as man, tlfe body is composed of an in-" 
numerable host of cells, more or less modified 
for special purposes. Whatever the cell is 
ordered to do, whether it be in the process of 



40 



MICROBES AND MEN. 



OCCOCOOCJCOO 



anooooouooo 



feeling, seeing, hearing, secreting, excreting, 
or anything else, it does that one thing over 
and over again until it becomes an expert or 
specialist. 

Habit is only a manifestation of the degree 
to which the cells of our bodies have been 
trained in certain directions. 

All movements are produced by contraction 
of protoplasm. A muscle is a mass of this 
substance set apart for a special 
use. Each muscle is made up of 
a very large number of minute 
fibers, and each of these of nu- 
merous cells of modified proto- 
plasm, placed in a row. In ap- 
pearance, a single fibre very much 
resembles a string of beads. If 
there are twenty thousand cells 
in a fiber and each cell contracts 
one- twenty -thousandth of an 
inch, the fiber will be shortened 
fibte 2i sh^winj one inch. All muscular move- 
GreatiV"enrged Xtxent is produced by the contrac- 
tion of modified cells of protoplasm. 

But the muscle-cells will not contract unless 
stimulated to do so by the nervous system, 
numerous small fibers of which extend into 
every muscle. The muscles are servants and 
are ordered to move by the brain or some 
other nerve center. 




CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 41 

The order is sent from the brain along the 
minute nerve fibers, very much as a telegram 
is sent from place to place along the wires. 
Anything which lessens the power of 
the brain to send its stimulating influ- 
ences to the muscle cells, or lessens the 
ability of the cells to respond readily, 
will lessen the strength of the muscle. 
That is, anything which makes protoplasm 
less sensitive or less active will weaken the 
nervous system and lessen muscular power. 

During the past twenty-five years, there 
have been thousands of carefully conducted 
experiments proving, beyond a doubt, that 
small quantities of alcohol lessen the move- 
ments of protoplasm, while larger quantities 
destroy these movements. While this under- 
lying fact is universally admitted, yet there 
are very many who still believe that alcohol 
stimulates the muscles to greater activity. 
This belief is still held, despite the well-known 
fact that muscles move only as they are acted 
upon by the nerves, and that alcohol lessens 
nerve activit3 r . Before chloroform came into 
use alcohol was given the patient in order to 
deaden the nervous system and thus lessen 
the pain in surgical operations. 

It is now often held in the mouth to relieve 
the toothache. Alcohol may produce such 
an inflammation in the stomach that drops 



42 MICROBES AND MEN. 

of blood ooze on the lining membrane, and 
yet no pain be felt. When people are under 
the influence of alcohol they do not suffer as 
much from the extremes of heat or cold as do 
others. Many freeze to death without know- 
ing that they are cold. Hundreds of facts, like 
the foregoing, confirm the value of the scien- 
tific experiments, and prove conclusively that 
alcohol does lessen the activity of the nervous 
system. 

Very many experiments, carefully conducted 
"with the most approved and precise instru- 
ments, prove that alcohol weakens every 
muscle in the body. Those who are training 
for such physical contests as prize-fighting, 
rowing, and ball-playing, are strictly forbid- 
den the use of alcohol. Thousands of trials 
have fully proved that men can do more work 
and endure more heat, cold, fatigue, or other 
hardships, without the use of alcohol than 
with it. A person may become a dangerous 
raving maniac by intoxication, but he will not 
acquire any degree of new strength. 

He is not stimulated, — he has simply de- 
ranged the nerve centers of his brain. Any 
healthy temperate person who doubts these 
statements can verify them by making the 
acquaintance of lifting scales and a bottle of 
whiskey. Common observation will prove 
that the statement of scientific facts already 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 43 

made is true, viz. — that alcohol lessens that 
property of protoplasm known as sensation, 
thereby retarding the action of the nervous 
system and the muscle cells, and results in 
weakening muscular power. No educated 
person, after having had his attention called 
to the matter, will, for a moment, doubt the 
truth of these conclusions. 

The next step in this research is not so 
easily taken. If alcohol weakens muscu- 
lar action IT MUST WEAKEN THE HEART'S 
ACTION, BECAUSE THE HEART IS A MUSCLE. 

Before the days of careful scientific investi- 
gation with accurate instruments, it was 
universally believed that alcohol was a stim- 
ulant. Even in recent years it is generally 
accepted as a settled fact and has been incor- 
porated into nearly all medical and scientific 
literature. Accurate knowledge of the physi- 
ological effects of alcohol has, until of late, 
been neglected in the general forward move- 
ment in medical science from a lack of careful 
scientific experiment and investigation. 

The writer began a series of experiments 
along this line in 1874, while an assistant of 
Dr. C. A. Kelsey, and has probably performed 
more experiments, in order to ascertain the 
effects of alcohol upon the healthy human 
heart, than has any other person. During 
these twen tj years of observation andexperi- 



44 MICROBES AND MEN. 

ment, not a single instance has been found 
where alcohol has proved itself to be a stimu- 
lant to the heart, in regard to either the 
strength or frequency of its contraction. 

The force of the heart's contraction is 
studied by using a very delicately constructed 
instrument called the sphygmograph, or pulse- 
writer. A part of this instrument consists of 
a small pad, which is pressed gently upon the 
pulse artery by means of a spring. As the 
pad rises and falls, with each beat of the pulse, 
the motion is communicated to a small cross- 
bar, which is oscillated by a standard at- 
tached to the top of the pad. To the cross- 
bar is attached a long marker. 

Every movement of the pulse is thus cor- 
rectly reproduced, in a magnified form, by the 
end of the marker. 

The frontispiece shows how the records are 
made. That part of the instrument which 
has been partially described is represented in 
the lower right hand corner of the engraving. 
It is attached to the wrist of the person who 
is being experimented upon. The marker ex- 
tends to a cylinder, covered with paper, which 
has been blackened by burning camphor. 
The cylinder is slowly revolved by turning a 
crank, which makes twenty-seven revolutions 
while the cylinder makes one. The exact 
form of the pulse is thus outlined in the soot 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 45 

on the cylinder, the height of th? elevations 
indicating the comparative strength of the 
heart's contractions. When the sooty paper 
has been covered with traces, it is very care- 
fully removed from the c\dinder and dipped 
in a saturated solution of white shellac in 
alcohol, making a permanent record. Sections 
of a few of the many papers thus prepared 
are given. These experiments were performed 
upon healthy and strictly temperate people, 
and give a fair idea of the average results of 
all. The traces were taken every fifteen 
minutes, while the person was seated and 
quiet in every respect. All necessary pre- 
cautions were taken regarding mental con- 
ditions and all outside influences. 

Pure alcohol (95% by volume) was used in 
all the experiments, for it is almost impossible 
to procure any other kind of unadulterated 
liquor. All pure liquors are practically noth- 
ing more or less than alcohol and water mix- 
ed in different proportions. 

The traces given below were selected, from 
the large number taken, to give a fair aver- 
age of results in relation to age, sex, weight, 
variations in natural pulse rate, amount of 
alcohol given, manner of giving it, and the 
time after meals when the observations were 
taken. 

Fig. 13 represents the pulse of B. H. B.,age 



46 



MICROBES AND MEN. 




Fig. 13. 



Fig. 14. 



60, weight 150. Experiment began about 
one and a half hours after breakfast, a trace 
being taken every fifteen minutes. Immedi- 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 47 




Fig. 15. 



Fig 16. 



ately after taking each of the first ten traces, 
a half drachm of alcohol (equal to ateaspoon- 
iul of whiskey) was given — five drachms in 



48 



MICROBES AND MEN. 







Fig. 17. Fig. 18. 

all. The pulse was carefully counted each 
time a trace was taken. The pulse rates 
were: 62, 61, 64, 63, 64, 62, 63, 62, 63, 64, 
62, 62, 62, 64, 64, 64. 

Fig 14 represents the pulse of Miss D. B., 
age 21, weight 100. Experiment began oi^e 
and three-fourths hours after dinner. Traces 
taken every fifteen minutes. One drachm of 
alcohol was given after taking the first and 
third traces, two drachms in all. The rates 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 49 



82 

81 

81 

82 

78 
78 

74 
72 

74 
76 




180 

I 

I 
76 

r 

78 



cl 74 



& 75 



75 




Pig. 19. 



Fig. 20. 



of the pulse when the traces were taken were: 
74, 67, 70, 71, 70, 69, 68, 67, 68, 72, 68, 66, 
67, 66, 66, 70. 

Fig. 15 represents the pulse of G. E. R., age 
23, weight 180. Experiment began one-half 
hour after dinner. A trace was taken each 
fifteen minutes. After each of the first eight 
traces was taken, one-half drachm of alcohol 
was given, four drachms in all. Pulse rates 



50 



MICROBES AND MEN. 




Fig. 21. 



Eig. 22. 



were: 71, 71, 71, 72, 70, 72, 65, 62, 63, 60, 
61, 62, 60, 57, 60, 58, 58, 58. 

Fig. 16 also represents the pulse of G. E. R. 
Experiment began one and one-half hours 
after dinner. Traces taken fifteen minutes 
apart. After each of the first four traces was 
taken two drachms of alcohol were given — 
eight drachms in all, Pulse rates were: 66, 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 51 

63, 62, 62, 64, 62, 62, 58, 65, 65, 60, 61, 60, 

58, 5?, 56. 

Fig. 17 represents the pulse of J. M. A., age 
27, weight 120. Experiment began one and 
one-half hours after supper. Fifteen minutes 
between traces. Gave two drachms alcohol 
after the first, third, and sixth traces were 
taken — six drachms in all. The pulse rates 
were: 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 92, 92, 91, 87, 86. 

Fig. 18 represents the pulse of H. E., age 
18, weight 140. Experiment began two and 
one-half hours after dinner. A trace taken 
each quarter of an hour. Gave four drachms 
of alcohol after each of the first four traces 
was taken — sixteen drachms, or two ounces, 
in all. The pulse rates were: 94, 95, 94, 90, 
90, 90, 89, 89, 85, 86, 87, 86. 

Fig. 19 represents the pulse of H. F. C. age 
26, weight 155. He was in the habit of 
smoking three or four cigars each day. A 
strong cup of coffee w^as taken with dinner at 
12 o'clock. Between 1 and 1:30, smoked a 
cigar. Experiment began at 3. Fifteen 
minutes between traces. Took two drachms 
of alcohol after each of first four traces, eight 
drachms in all. The pulse rates were: 84, 82, 
81, 81, 82, 78, 78, 74, 72, 74, 76. 

In this case the heart w^as much weakened 
by the tobacco habit. At first the alcohol 
partially revived the "tobacco heart,' ' then 



52 MICROBES AND MEN. 

added its own paralyzing effects to that of 
the tobacco, making the man almost pulse- 
less, although he felt better and stronger. 

Fig. 20 represents the pulse of the same per- 
son, six days later. During the six days he 
abstained from the use of tobacco and tea 
and coffee. The experiment began two and 
one-half hours after dinner. One-half drachm 
of alcohol was taken after each of the first 
eight traces was made — four drachms in all. 
The pulse rates were: 80, 76, 76, 79, 78, 77, 
77, 74, 75, 75, 75. 

This set of traces and Figs. 13, 15, and 16, 
show something regarding the length of time 
required for the heart to begin to rally from 
the depressing effects of alcohol, when taken 
in small doses by healthy temperate people. 

Fig. 21 represents the pulse of I. H., age 46, 
weight 135, under the influence of chloro- 
form. The traces were taken every two min- 
utes. He began inhaling the chloroform af- 
ter the first trace was taken, continuing for 
twenty-three minutes. At no time was there 
total unconsciousness. The pulse rates were: 
70, 71, 69, 70, 72, 72, 72, 68, 69, 70, 70, 67, 
66, 64. Is chloroform a more powerful heart 
depressant than alcohol ? 

Fig. 22 represents the natural pulse of I. H. 
O . The experiment began immediately after a 



ERRATA 
The sentence on this page, commencing in the 16th line from 
from the top, should read: 

Twenty series of records (taken in order 
without omission) from these experiments 
give an average fall of six beats per minute 
in two and a half hours, beginning one and a 
half hours after meals. 



CONQUEROR OP HEARTS AND HANDS. 53 

light dinner, at which neither meat, tea, coffee, 
nor condiments were taken. Traces taken fif- 
teen minutes apart. The pulse rates were: 71, 
75, 74, 74, 71, 76, 75, 76, 73, 72, 73, 73, 69, 72, 
72. This set of traces is about an average of 
many series of experiments made to ascer- 
tain the natural rise and fall in the force of 
the pulse. The depressions in the force of the 
pulse, (which indicates the strength of the 
heart), as shown by the preceding sets of 
traces, are not due to natural causes. 

The experiments given demonstrate that 
alcohol is not a stimulant, at least so far as 
the force of the heart is concerned. The rates 
of the pulse given seem also to be affected by 
the alcohol. Twenty series of records (taken 
order without omission) from these experi- 
ments give an average fall of six beats per 
minute in two and a half hours after meals. 
The average amount of alcohol given in each 
experiment was about five drachms. Twenty 
series of records of the natural pulse, for the 
same length of time and the same interval 
aicer meals, give an average fall of 3.65 beats 
per minute, or less than two-thirds as much 
decrease in the rate as when under the in- 
fluence of small doses of alcohol. 

For many years the world has generally 
accepted as final the results of a carefully 
conducted experiment by Drs. Parkes and 



54 MICROBES AND MEN.. 

Wollowiz, of England, to ascertain the effects 
of alcohol upon the rate of the heart's action. 
This very important experiment was made 
upon a healthy man, 28 years old, weighing 
136 lbs. His diet was the same in kind and 
amount during the experiment, meat being 
prohibited. 

He was a habitual user of tea, coffee, and 
tobacco, besides being a persistent moderate 
beer drinker. His system was so accustomed 
to the influence of these narcotics, that eight 
ounces of pure alcohol given in one day, dur- 
in the progress of the experiment, did not 
produce "narcotic symptoms." During the 
experiment the habitual use of alcoholic li- 
quors was prohibited, but tea and coffee were 
allowed, also a daily allowance of one-half 
ounce of tobacco. 

The pulse was counted eight times each day, 
208 records in all. For a period of eight days 
no alcohol was given; in the next six days 
there was a daily allowance of from one to 
eight ounces of pure alcohol; during the 
next six days no alcohol was given; then for 
three days about three ounces of pure alcohol, 
in the form of brandy, were consumed each 
day; after which came a like period of no al- 
cohol. The conclusions were, in part, that 
two ounces of pure alcohol (equal to a gill of 
brandy or whiskey) increased the heart's ac- 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 55 

tion 8,172 beats per day, while eight ounces 
increased its action 25,000 beats. When the 
facts regarding the habitual and continued 
use of narcotics are taken into consideration, 
the absurdity of accepting the results of this 
experiment, as final, is apparent. Now, since 
much that has been believed, said, and writ- 
ten, for over twenty years, regarding the ac- 
tion of alcohol on the heart, has been based 
upon the published results of this experi- 
ment, the writer maybe pardoned for present- 
ing the results of his most extended series of 
experiments designed to verify the "celebra- 
ted Parke's experiment. ,, 

A perfectly healthy man was selected, age 
46, height 5 ft. 9 in., weight 135 lbs., who 
had never used narcotics (or "stimulants") 
of any kind. He was a retired physician, of 
good physique, nervous temperament, but 
with digestive powers somewhat below the 
average. All necessary precautions were 
taken regarding diet, amount of fluids used, 
temperature of room and of food and drink, 
position of body, exercise, and state of mind. 
The pulse was carefully counted every fifteen 
minutes from rising to retiring, or sixty times 
each day, 1440 records in all. The diet con- 
sisted of bread and butter, oatmeal, corn- 
meal, granola, limited quantities of potato 
and fruit, and one pint of milk per day. 



56 MICROBES AND MEN. 

When alcohol was used between meals, it was 
well diluted with water ; when taken with 
meals it was put into one-third of a pint of 
milk, all other fluids being prohibited, as well 
as meats and condiments. Each meal occu- 
pied the time between two counts. The 
records began each day at 7:30 a.m., three 
being made before breakfast, eighteen be- 
tween breakfast and dinner, twenty-two be- 
tween dinner and supper, and seventeen 
between supper and the time of retiring, 
10:15 p.m. The experiment extended over 
twenty-four days, divided into eight periods 
of three days each. During the first period, 
no alcohol was given. One ounce of pure al- 
cohol (95% by volume) was given the first 
day of the second period, two ounces the sec- 
ond day, and three ounces on the third. The 
third, fifth, and seventh periods were like the 
first, and the fourth, sixth, and eighth were 
like the second. The 720 records made dur- 
ing the twelve no-alcohol days gave an aver- 
age of 66.48 heart beats per minute. The 
same number made during the twelve alcohol 
days gave an average of 65.52 heart beats 
per minute, that is, the heart beats at the 
rate of 1382.4 times per day /ess than natural 
when an average of two ounces of pure al- 
cohol was given daily. The alcohol was giv- 
en between 8 a. m, and 6.15 p.m., in doses 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 57 

varying from one-half drachm to an ounce, 
two thirds of the time it being givenin three 
equal doses with meals. It should be remem- 
bered that brandy, whiskey, gin, and rum, are 
about one-half, wines about one-fifth, cider 
about one-fourteenth, and beer about one- 
twentieth, alcohol, this being the active prin- 
cipal in all these fluids. 

When three ounces of alcohol were given, in 
drachm doses every fifteen minutes, there were 
marked ' 'narcotic symptoms V In fact , there 
was an advanced stage of intoxication which 
caused the man to stagger about the room, 
and made it difficult for him to feed himself. 
The intoxication was w-ell marked when an 
ounce had been taken in this manner; but 
when the ounce was taken with a meal, there 
was but slight intoxication, and that would 
usually disappear in about thirty minutes. 
About fifteen minutes after a meal, when one 
ounce had been taken, the man would ap- 
pear dizzy and bewildered, would stretch 
out his arms and clinch his hands, much as a 
person sometimes does when awaking from 
the effects of chloroform. When three ounces 
per day were given, there was a disturbance 
of digestion, followed by tenderness in the 
region of the stomach, indicating that the al- 
cohol had produced more or less inflam- 
mation. 



58 MICROBES AND MEN. 

This irritation of the stomach, and the prob- 
ably prolonged period of digestion, seemed to 
be the principal causes which tended to in- 
crease the heart's action when the larger 
doses were given. That is, alcohol does not 
increase the daily average of the pulse rate 
until enough is taken to produce local inflam- 
mation and a general disturbance of the sys- 
tem. The average of the eight days, when 
the allowance averaged one and one-half 
ounces per day, was 64.87 beats per minute 
or 2318.4 fewer beats per day than the nor- 
mal rate. The average of the four days, when 
three ounces were given daily, was 66.83 
beats per minute or 504 more than the nor- 
mal daily rate. This higher rate is not due 
to stimulation, but to the fact that the pulse 
rate did not fall as low before dinner, supper, 
and bed time, as it did when the smaller doses 
were given. If we compare the 'one ounce 
days' with the ' three ounce days' in the chart 
of pulse rates, we are led to inquire whether 
the difference is not due to an irritated 
stomach and a retarded digestion. 

It would have been very interesting and 
profitable to have given this rare and valu- 
able subject, for such an experiment, larger 
doses, but it was not considered entirely safe 
to do so. It is not safe for adults who are 
not habitual users of narcotics, (including tea 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 59 

and coffee), to take eight ounces of alcohol in 
one day. If that quantity should be taken at 
one dose, fatal results would often quickly 
follow. 

The results of the above experiment agree 
with the records of many similar ones taken 
for the same purpose. The only conclusions 
that can be drawn from twenty years of ex- 
periment and observation are, that alcoholic 
liquors of all kinds and in all sized doses, usu- 
ally depress the action of the heart both in 
force and in rate. There is no period of stim- 
ulation or excitement. 

The depression in force usually begins in 
about twenty minutes and lasts two or more 
hours, while the rate is usually but slightly 
affected. Much material is at hand from 
which these conclusions are drawn. Those 
who have never conducted such a series oi 
experiments are scarcely able to comprehend 
the amount of expense, time, patience, and 
care necessary, in order to get sufficient data 
for anything like correct conclusions. The 
chart of pulse rates will be found very in- 
teresting and valuable. Each square repre- 
sents fifteen minutes, horizontally, and an 
increase or decrease of one pulse beat per 
minute, vertically. The continuous irregular 
lines represent the average of twelve no-alco- 
hol days, each beginning with sixty-two 



60 



MICROBES AND MEN. 



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CONQUEROR OP HEARTS AND HANDS. 61 

The first dotted line (at the top) represents 
the average of twelve alcohol days when an 
average of two ounces per day was given. 
No. 2, the average of eight days for an aver- 
age of one and one-half ounces; No, 3, four 
da\^s, for one ounce; No. 4, four days, for 
two ounces; and No. 5, four days, for the 
three ounces per day. 

The thoughtful and observing person will 
find much of value and interest in the pulse 
chart. The inquisitive one will soon discover 
that it was necessary to make over eight 
hundred points when i 'laying off " the chart, 
and that the straight-edge occupied over six 
hundred positions in the drawing of it. The 
economical person will observe that it repre- 
sents over one hundred dollars in time and 
money; and the curious will be delighted to 
know that there is nothing else on earth just 
like it. 

The reader will bear in mind that all these 
experiments were made for the purpose of as- 
certaining the effect of alcohol on the healthy 
human heart. The writer is not aware of 
any carefully and wisely conducted experi- 
ment that has ever been made, that does not, 
in the main, agree with the result just record- 
ed. H. N. Martin, A. M., M. D., D. Sc, pro- 
fessor in Johns Hopkins University, and one 
of the noted experimenters in America, has 



62 MICROBES AND MEN. 

done much praiseworthy experimenting in or- 
der to determine the effect of alcohol on the 
action of a dog's heart when separated from 
all parts of the body except the lungs. In 
these careful tests, the heart was first fur- 
nished with pure blood, then with blood con- 
taining a certain per cent of alcohol, after- 
wards with pure blood again. If the heart 
in any case did not revive when furnished 
with pure blood, after it had been depressed 
by alcohol, that experiment was rejected, 
fearing that the depression was due to failing 
vitality. But when the heart revived under 
the influence of pure blood, it was considered 
certain that the depression was caused by the 
alcohol. Dr. Martin states the results of his 
noted experiments, as follows: — "Blood con- 
taining one-eighth per cent of alcohol has no 
immediate perceptible action on the isolated 
heart. Blood containing one-fourth per cent, 
by volume, almost invariably remarkably 
diminishes, within a minute, the work done 
by the heart. Blood containing one-half per 
cent, that is, five parts in a thousand, always 
diminishes and may even bring the amount 
pumped out of the left ventricle to so small a 
quantity that it is not sufficient to supply 
coronary arteries/ ' 

An ordinary drink of whiskey or brandy 
will give more than the one-fourth per cent, 



CONQUEROR OF HEARTS AND HANDS. 63 

or one part in four hundred of pure alcohol 
in the blood of an average man, which "al- 
most invariably remarkably diminished with- 
in a minute the work done by the heart." 

These experiments, and hundreds of others, 
bearing directly or indirectly upon the same 
subject, which have been made upon the 
lower animals, by some of the best scientists 
in the world, all proclaim that alcohol lessens 
the sensibility and motive power of proto- 
plasm and, therefore, not only lessens the 
ability of the nervous system to send stimu- 
lating influences to the muscles, but lessens 
the ability of the muscles to respond to the 
influences sent to them. Alcohol is not a 
stimulant. Thousands of fatal cases of 
stimulation (?) annually attest to the truth- 
fulness of this statement. Alcohol, as found 
in all kinds of alcoholic liquors, is the'great 
conqueror not only of hearts and hands, but 
of bodies and souls. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE FIRST GRIST MILLS RUN BY WATER. 

Man is said to be a stomach with such ap- 
pliances as feet, hands, and head, to keep it 
supplied with material to be ground. This 
process of reducing food to a condition fitted 
to make bone, muscle, and brain, is carried 
on largely by water. In fact every move- 
ment of our bodies, even to the assistance in 
the production of thought, is possible only by 
the aid of water. If our brains and other 
organs did not contain a large amount of 
water, they would be of no more use than 
ordinary leather. Water is the only fluid that 
can dissolve the various articles of food 
which are taken into our stomachs. The 
blood is fluid and is rendered capable of con- 
veying the digested food to every tissue and 
cell of the body, because it contains a large 
proportion of water. It is water which takes 
up the waste products from the wear and 
tear of the tissues, and conveys them out of 



THE FIRST GRIST MILL RUN BY WATER. 65 

the body by a most complicated and wonder- 
ful sewerage system. Water gives form, size, 
flexibility, and capacity for motion, to the 
different parts and organs of our bodies. The 
chewing and swallowing of solid food is made 
possible because of its being mixed with the 
saliva, which is 99 per cent water. The sali- 
va moistens, and partially digests, the food. 
When the food reaches the stomach it is mixed 
with large quantities of gastric juice, 97 per 
cent of which is 'water. The other three fluids, 
poured into the digestive organs beyond the 
stomach, are from 87 to 90 per cent water. 
The food, thus prepared by these very watery 
fluids to become a part of the living tissues, 
is taken up and carried to every hungry cell 
in the body by the blood, which is, itself, 79 
per cent water. The muscles, w T hich contract 
with so much power, are 74 per cent water, 
and the brain — the organ of the mind — con- 
tains no less than 79 or 80 per cent of this 
all-important and ever-present fluid. A con- 
stant supply of water is so necessary that 
great suffering results if it be withheld for even 
a few hours, and death would follow in less 
than a week. Insane persons who have taken 
nothing but water have been known to sur- 
vive for two months. Most articles of food, 
as prepared for the table, are more than half 
water. 



66 MICROBES AND MEN. 

On an average, it is necessary to add, each 
day, about one pint of water to the amount 
taken as food, in order to supply the de- 
mands of the system. Thirst, in the healthy 
person, is the crying out of the cells of the 
body for the water needed for carrying on 
the proper work of the various tissues. No 
other fluid will in any manner , or to any de- 
gree, supply this imperative demand. 

When a drink, which contains a fluid that 
has such an affinity for water, that this fluid 
will rob the cells of water already contained, 
is introduced into the system, thirst is in- 
creased, because water has been drawn from 
the tissues instead of being supplied to them 
as demanded. A person who may be thirsty 
from excessive perspiration, caused by a hot 
bath, does not have the thirst relieved by in- 
creasing the amount of water in the bath- 
tub. Neither is a cell or tissue, which has 
been robbed of a part of its water by a chem- 
ical agent, satisfied by any amount of water 
that may be hurried past, on its way out of 
the system, by the shortest possible route. 

Alcohol has such an affinity for water that 
it seizes upon it whenever it can be found. 
If a piece of lean meat be put into alcohol it 
will become quite hard and shrunken by hav- 
ing water extracted. Mix the white of an 
egg with brandy and it will be "cooked," be- 



THE FIRST GRIST MILL RUN BY WATER. 67 

cause the alcohol has taken so much of the 
water from it. Soft-bodied animals, when 
preserved in alcohol, are so dried and 
shrunken as to be useless for illustrations in 
teaching natural histor\\ Alcohol that has 
already been mixed with large quantities of 
water, retains its ability to take more water 
from every^ possible source. 

All kinds of alcoholic liquors are simply 
water mixed with a certain per cent of alco- 
hol. Ten pints of beer are equal to one pint 
of whiskey or brandy put into nine pints of 
water, or one half pint of alcohol put into 
nine and one half pints of water. The man 
who pays one dollar per day for twenty-one 
half-pint drinks of beer usually objects to 
being called a " water drinker," although he 
has consumed nearly ten pints of that fluid, 
for which he has paid eighty cents. But even 
in such a case this large amount of water will 
not prevent the half pint of alcohol from so 
injuring the tissues, that there will be suffer- 
ing from thirst as soon as the system is 
sufficiently recovered from the narcotic effects 
of the alcohol. The habitual use of beer, 
cider, or stronger liquors, increases thirst, 
and this can only be relieved by keeping the 
tissues so stupefied with alcohol that they 
are not able to cry out against the injuries 
already inflicted. When the thirst increases 



68 MICROBES AND MEN. 

faster than the alcohol can be supplied to 
quiet the demands of the tissues, it becomes 
all-absorbing and is called dipsomania, or 
drink madness. 

When alcohol (in any alcoholic liquor) is 
swallowed, two principal effects on the mouth 
and throat are quite noticeable. More or 
less water is taken from the tissues, giving a 
sensation of thirst, and this is intensified as 
soon as the second or deadening effect has 
ceased. This stupefying effect causes the lit- 
tle muscles, which surround the minute blood- 
vessels, and regulate the supply of blood to 
any given part, to relax their hold on the ves- 
sels, and this allows an increased flow of 
blood to the mucous membrane. The unusual 
amount of warm blood around the nerves of 
feeling in the mucous membrane gives a sen- 
sation of increased warmth. This sensation, 
and the increased redness, are known as the 
irritating effects of alcohol. 

When alcohol reaches the stomach, where it 
must remain for some time in contact with 
the tissues, the effects are more marked. If 
the alcohol is well diluted, as in beer, the red- 
ness or blush from taking the first dose will 
soon pass away. If its use is continued the 
redness becomes permanent, for the little mus- 
cles lose their power over the blood-vessels. 
The continued congestion and irritated condi- 



THE FIRST GRIST MILL RUN BY WATER. 69 

tion causes the lining membrane to thicken at 
first and then to slough off in patches, there- 
by producing ulcers. When average quanti- 
ties of beer and cider are the only liquors 
used, the stomach is not apt to ulcerate, but 
is usually more or less enlarged. No person 
can habitually use average quantities of any- 
kind of alcoholic liquor and have a perfectly 
healthy stomach. 

Every tissue, and every fluid of the whole 
body, is able to carry on the work necessary 
to make life and health possible, only when it 
contains a certain amount of water. So is it 
with other useful articles. Dried ink is as 
useless as is ink that has been flooded with 
water. When a person drinks alcoholic 
liquors, the alcohol extracts water from the 
various tissues and renders them more or less 
useless, until they have time to repair the in- 
jury, or to form the habit of doing the best 
they can under the abnormal circumstances. 
While the alcohol is working ruin by lessen- 
ing the activit}^ of the nerves and muscles 
and extracting water from the tissues and 
cells, the water, taken along with it, or to re- 
lieve the thirst caused by it, is making the 
fluids of the body more or less useless by 
diluting tliem. This is especially true so far 
as the digestive fluids of the mouth and 
stomach are concerned. The irritating effects 



70 MICROBES AND MEN. 

of alcohol cause an increased flow of these 
fluids, but of an inferior quality, and then the 
irritant proceeds to separate the active part, 
or ferment, from the water in these aids to 
digestion, rendering them entirely useless. 
From this, it is plain that digestion cannot 
be carried on in the stomach while any con- 
siderable quantity of alcohol is present. Be- 
fore the digestive process can proceed, the 
diluted and useless fluids, including the alco- 
hol, must be removed and new fluids secreted 
and poured into the stomach. When a 
moderate quantity of alcohol is taken several 
times each hour after a meal, the food will 
not even begin to digest. In such cases, the 
food, together with quantities of ropy 
mucous, is sometimes vomited up ten or even 
twenty hours after the meal. If the quantity 
of alcohol drank is large, as in a drunken 
debauch, the digestion is not only stopped, 
but the stomach refuses to remove the alco- 
hol, as fast as it is received ; so alcohol may 
be ejected, with the undigested food, after the 
individual has lain in a drunken stupor for 
ten or more hours. 

The large quantities of mucous poured into 
the stomach, under such circumstances, seems 
to be a wise provision of nature to dilute and 
surround the poison and keep it away from 
the delicate tissues, where it might excite 



THE FIRST GRIST MILL RUN BY WATER. 71 

fatal inflammation. It also serves to prevent 
the poison from too rapidly escaping into the 
blood, where it would certainly produce fatal 
results. 

Alcoholic liquors of every kind and name 
can never, under any possible condition, be 
of use to a healthy stomach or to its healthy 
owner. In the very rare cases where alco- 
holic liquors can be prescribed with benefit to 
a diseased stomach, or to its diseased owner, 
other more useful and less injurious remedies 
can be prescribed with more benefit. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE SUGAR FACTORY. 

It is necessary that a large part of our 
bread, and of nearly all other vegetable foods 
(the starchy portions), shall be changed into 
sugar in the process of digestion. All the sugar 
that has been made from the starch in the 
food, together with all other foods and fluids, 
(except fats), are caught up by the minute 
blood vessels of the stomach and intestines, 
carried to the portal vein, and hurried on to 
the liver. 

The liver is the largest and most important 
gland in the body. It is divided into about 
2,000,000 sections or "rooms" (lobules). In 
each "room" there are about 125,000 skilled 
workers — cells of modified protoplasm — who 
toil day and night that the population of the 
entire system may be supplied with properly 
prepared food. When the portal vein enters 
the liver it divides and subdivides until the 
veins are only ^2ooth of an inch in diameter. 



THE SUGAR FACTORY. 73 

These little veins run over and around the 
"rooms, "or lobules,in every direction,branch- 
ing off, finally, into capillary blood-vessels, 
which are only %oooth of an inch in diameter. 
Large numbers of these capillaries pass into 
each "room" and thus bring the blood, con- 
taining the food and drink just received from 
the stomach and intestines, into close con- 
tact with each of the 250,000,000,000 work- 
ers, or liver-cells. Each "room" is supplied 
with sewer pipes, serving as outlets into the 
hepatic duct. This duct conveys the large 
quantities of material, which have been ex- 
tracted from the blood, while passing through 
the liver, into a convenient reservoir called 
the gall-bladder. 

The three principal functions of the liver 
are, (a) to refine or remanufacture the sugar 
received from the organs of digestion; (b) to 
produce large quantities of another kind of 
sugar; and (c) to manufacture or excrete the 
bile. Upon the proper performance of these 
functions of this organ, depend the hap- 
piness, health, and life of the individ- 
ual. The food must be properly prepared 
by the liver, else it will not nourish the tis- 
sues — leaving the individual to die of slow 
starvation, regardless of the amount or kind of 
food taken. When the blood contains too 
much bile, we have that peculiar and danger- 



74 MICROBES AND MEN. 

ous disea.se called j aundice. While it is necess- 
ary to keep the blood free from bile, yet the 
bile is a necesssary factor in completing the 
process of digestion, being poured into the 
intestines from the gall-bladder, just below 
the stomach. If all this work is carried on 
by the great " sugar factory/ ' and if health 
and life depend upon the amount and quality 
of work done, it seems wise and proper that 
we should manifest an intelligent interest in 
the welfare of the two hundred and fifty bil- 
lions of little toilers who strive so faithfully, 
day and night, to do so much and to do it 
so well. 

We have learned that alcohol destroys the 
gastric juice of the stomach, and may, in time, 
destroy the stomach itself, thus interfering 
very much with the preparation of the food, 
which is on its way to become a part of the 
body. Under no circumstances do the di- 
gestive fluids change the alcohol, for it is not 
capable of being digested. It is taken up by 
the blood-vessels in an unchanged state, and 
carried to the liver with the selected food and 
water. When it reaches the liver its effects 
are very much like those produced when it 
first comes into contact with the tissues of 
the mouth — it lessens the activity of the pro- 
toplasm in its whole structure. This results 
in an enlargement of the liver,caused by hold- 



THE SUGAR FACTORY. 75 

ing a larger amount of blood in the vessels, 
and saturating the tissues around them with 
the water which escapes from the vessels. 
The stupefying of the liver cells, and the 
change in the condition of the whole organ, 
interferes with its important work in prepar- 
ing the food for the nourishment of all the 
tissues of the body, and in taking the bile out 
of the blood for its necessary office in the pro- 
cess of digestion. Of course this defective 
work leads to a derangement of the whole 
system, as is manifest in a disturbance of 
digestion, a coated tongue, foul breath, head- 
ache, dizziness, languor, "the blues,' ' and 
general unpleasant sensations of both body 
and mind. 

All consciousness of the general distur- 
bance and ruin, which have been wrought by 
this evil spirit, may be temporarily banished, 
if enough more of the same article be taken to 
quiet the brain and nerves. This leads the 
victim to believe that he is better, and, by de- 
grees, he becomes a confirmed drunkard. 

The late Dr. Palmer, of the University of 
Michigan, when speaking of the chronic 
effects of alcohol on the liver, says: "Much 
more serious effects are, in some cases, pro- 
duced by alcoholics, and beer is more apt to 
act in the way about to be mentioned than 
whiskey. An accumulation of fat is often 



76 MICROBES AND MEN. 

produced in the liver, causing its greater and 
more permanent enlargement, and impairing 
more permanently its action. When this is 
the case stopping the use of the drink does 
not produce the same rapid improvement as 
in the cases before mentioned. But where 
the fat is deposited between the proper liver 
cells or structures, without taking the place 
of them, abstaining from drinking may, in 
time, be followed by much improvement. 

There is another fatty change, much worse 
than t his, where particles of fat take the place of 
the structure. This is called fatty degeneration, 
and when it occurs other organs are likely to 
be affected in a similar way; and this disease 
before a great while ends in death. 

When any portion of the liver is changed 
into fat, that part cannot do its work, and 
as the change goes on, action will cease, and 
death must follow. # # # 

I will here only say that there is a disease 
of the liver called Cirrhosis, from its yellow 
color, and hob-nail liver, from there being up- 
on its surface rounded projections, looking 
like the large nails on the soles of an English 
laborer's shoes; and this disease is also called 
gin-liver, from its always being produced by 
drinking strong liquor. The liver, though 
swollen at first, becomes shriveled and much 
smaller later, and all through it are small 



THE SUGAR FACTORY. 77 

masses, causing the inside to look like a cake 
of beeswax in which, when it was melted,yel- 
low peas had been mixed. 

In this condition the blood cannot properly 
circulate through it, it cannot perform its 
proper functions, dropsy follows ; and when 
the disease is established, death always oc- 
curs in a few months, or at the longest in a 
very few years. As with certain alcoholic 
diseases of the stomach, particularly cirrhosis 
and contraction of its walls, even the aban- 
donment of the alcohol comes too late. 

This Cirrhosis, as well as other structural 
alcoholic diseases, is more likely to occur from 
steady drinking, though it be not carried to 
the extent of positive drunkenness, than from 
occasional debauches, however excessive, and 
however morally and socially degrading and 
disastrous. These structural changes of the 
liver, from the effects of alcohol, though 
sufficiently common to be very familiar to 
physicians, are not nearly so frequent as the 
derangements of action of this important 
organ from the same cause, without distin- 
guishable changes of its structure." 

Dr. Hope, in his "Morbid Anatomy," speak- 
ing of a cab-driver's liver, said: — "The tuber- 
cles first appeared as individual grains, or 
points of disease, then they coalesced and 
finally formed large compact masses. The 



78 MICROBES AND MEN. 

liver is enormous — five times its natural size, 
crammed with thousands of tubera, varying 
from this size to that of an egg. 11 

Dr. Richardson says: (' Diseases of Modern 
Life' p. 256-7-8), "The liver of the confirmed 
alcoholic is probably never free from the in- 
fluence of the poison ; it is too often saturated 
with it. * * The organ at first becomes 
enlarged from the distention of its vessels, 
the surcharge of fluid matter, and the thicken- 
ing of tissue. After a time there follows con- 
traction of membrance, and slow shrinking 
of the whole mass of the organ in its cellular 
parts. Then the shrunken, hardened, rough- 
ened mass is said to be "hob-nailed. " * * 
The body of him in whom it is developed is 
usually dropsical in its lower parts, owing to 
the obstruction offered to the returning blood 
by the veins, and death is certain. 

* * Again, under an increase of fatty sub- 
stance, the structure of the liver may he 
charged with fatty cells, and undergo what 
is technically designated fatty degeneration. 
I touch with the lightest hand upon these 
deteriorations, and I omit many others. My 
object is gained if I but impress the mind of 
the reader with the serious nature of the 
changes that, in this one organ, alone, follow 
an excessive use of alcohol." 

The writer has seen a drunkard's liver 



THE SUGAR FACTORY. 79 

-which had the general appearance of a mass 
of decomposing cheese, and when a single cut 
was made through it, there were revealed 
hundreds of "pockets" from the size of a pin 
head to that of a walnut, all filled with a 
soft purulent matter. These chronic diseases 
of the liver are nearly, or quite, painless, pro- 
gress slowly, and give very little or no warn- 
ing of their presence till long after all hope of 
recovery is past, even when the cause which 
produced them is discontinued. Too often it 
is a fatal error for a person to believe that 
he is not being injured by alcohol, simply be- 
cause he does not suffer pain. 

It is not possible for any person to use 
any kind of alcoholic liquors habitually 
and possess a perfectly healthy liver. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE HEATING PLANT. 

The wind pipe passes from the throat down 
into the chest, where it divides into the two 
large bronchial tubes, one for 
each lung. These bronchial 
tubes divide and subdivide until 
they are too small to be seen 
without the aid of a microscope. 
At the end of the minute bron- 
chial tubes are the air-eel Is, which 
are about Viooth of an inch in di- 
ameter. The air-cells are not 
Fig. 24.— Minute like the blood, muscle, nerve, or 

bronchial tubes ' . 

terminating in other body cells, or themicrobes, 

air-cells. Great- - . 

ly enlarged. which are one-celled plants or 
animals, for these are always little masses of 
protoplasm, more or less modified, and with 
or without a surrounding membrane; while 
the air-cells are hollow spaces surrounded by 
membranes which are only 1 /24ooth of an inch 
thick. However thin the membrane may ap- 




THE HEATING PEANNT. 81 

pear to be, still it is more than five times 
thicker than a red corpuscle of the blood. 
Orton's Zoology states that there are in the 
lungs of each person 600,000,000 air-cells, 
and that the surrounding membranes of all 
these, if spread out, would cover 132 square 
feet, equal to eight or nine times the surface 
of the whole body. 

The blood-vessels which enter the lungs 
from the heart, divide and subdivide until 
they become capillaries %oooth of an inch in 
diameter, with walls of almost inconceivable 
thinness. These minute blood-vessels pass 
over and between the air-cells in every 
direction, thus spreading out the blood in 
exceedingly thin layers almost in direct con- 
tact with the inhaled air which lies on the 
other side of the 132 square feet of membrane. 
Through this membrane passes the poisonous 
carbonic acid gas of the blood to be carried 
out of the lungs by the expired air. At the 
same time the oxygen of the air is passing in- 
ward through the same membrane to reach 
the red corpuscles, these having a great 
affinity for oxygen. Drowning results from 
the preventing of the interchange of these 
gases for a very few- moments. 

The air-cells are supplied with fresh air by 
the process of breathing. This is accomplished 
in the successive expansion and contraction 



82 MICROBES AND MEN. 

of the chest by the activity of a large number 
of muscles. We have already learned that al- 
cohol lessens muscular power, therefore its use 
must lessen the amount of pure air supplied , by 
interfering with the act of breathing, making it 
less powerful and less frequent. A part of the 
alcohol taken into the system is thrown out by 
the lungs, — as shown by chemical tests and by 
the odor of alcohol in the breath,— thus making 
the smaller amount of inhaled air doubly im- 
pure while in the lungs. Also, the alcohol in the 
blood so changes it that it is unable to throw 
out, as it ought, the waste and poisonous mat- 
ter. The amount of carbonic acid gas thrown 
out of the system through the lungs is said to 
be reduced one half in some cases. 

The red coloring matter of the corpuscles has 
such an affinity for oxygen that it takes it from 
the air in the lungs, through the membranes of 
the air-cells. It is then distributed over the en- 
tire body, uniting in the meantime with the pre- 
pared food in the blood . The uniting of the oxy- 
gen with the food elements forms a true com- 
bustion, or burning, thus supplying the body 
with heat and vitality, making life and activity 
possible. Anything which interferes with the 
supply of air to the lungs or with the work of 
the red coloring matter of the 25, 000,000, 000,- 
000 red corpuscles in securing their quota of ox- 
ygen, interferes with the very fountains of life. 



THE HEATING PLANT. 83 

Alcohol has such an affinity for the red 
coloring matter that it destroys very many 
of the corpuscles, when large quantities of it 
are introduced into the blood, and all are 
more or less injured. When small quantities 
are taken, the damage is proportionally less. 
When the amount of alcohol found in a full 
drink of beer, or a half drink of whiskey, gets 
into the blood, it lessens the quantity of oxy- 
gen consumed to such an extent that care- 
fully conducted experiments will readily 
demonstrate and measure the difference. As 
the heat of the body is maintained by the 
union of oxygen with the digested food, it 
followS'that anything which interferes with 
perfect digestion tends to lower the heat of 
the body. This is especially true regarding 
that special process and final digestive act, 
performed by the liver, which prepares the 
food to be burned by the oxygen. When we 
consider how alcohol acts upon the stomach, 
liver, lungs, and especially upon the red 
corpuscles, we can readily believe what the 
thermometer always tells us in such cases, al- 
though the external appearances seem to dis- 
prove it, viz.: alcohol lowers the temperature 
of the body. 

When moderate doses of alcohol are taken, 
there is a partial paralysis of the muscles 
which control the supply of blood to the skin. 



84 MICROBES AND MEN. 

This results in an increased flow of blood to 
the surface of the body, giving the appearance 
of an increased temperature, and greater 
activity in the circulation. 

The nerves of sensation, which report to the 
brain the changes in the temperature, are lo- 
cated near the surface of the skin and are ac- 
customed to a certain degree of heat. When 
the hot blood rushes to the surface, the nerves 
report an increase of temperature, just as the 
nerves of the face do when a person blushes, 
although the general heat of the body may 
have been lowered. 

When alcohol circulates in the blood, it not 
only injures the corpuscles, and every other 
part of the blood, but it also injures the deli- 
cate membranes of the air-cells as it passes 
over and through them. The skin is for the 
protection of the surface of the body, and is 
very tough and strong to resist all the wear 
and tear of a life time; but when alcohol is 
applied to it for the first time it produces con- 
jestion. 

If applied to the same place for a number of 
times, the skin will become thickened and oth- 
erwise injured. When alcohol is constantly 
attacking the membranes of the air-cells, and 
other tissues which are not exposed and are 
so very delicate,it is reasonable to believe that 



THE HEATING PLANT. 85 

injury is done in every case, and that these in- 
juries must, in time, prove fatal. 

The large quantity of water taken with 
alcohol, or to quench the thirst caused by 
it, also works untold mischief in the blood, 
lungs, and other organs. The internal reve- 
nue statistics for the year 1893 show that 
the people of the United States consume an- 
nually over 100,000,000 gallons of spirits 
(whiskey, brandy, etc.) and over 1,000,000,- 
000 gallons of beer, besides all the untold 
millions of gallons of wine and cider. The 
amount of pure alcohol in the beer and spir- 
its consumed is about equal, 50,000,000 
gallons in each, or 100,000,000 gallons 
of pure alcohol in both. If the amount 
of water added to the spirits by the retailer 
before it is sold, and by the consumer before 
and after drinking it, is equal to three times 
the bulk of the raw spirits, and if the untold 
quantities of artificial liquors, domestic beer, 
wine, and cider, and the product (with the 
water consumed with it) of thousands of 
illicit distilleries, equal the amount of pure 
alcohol in the beer and spirits, (and these are 
reasonable estimates,) then each of the four- 
teen million drinkers of all classes consumes, 
on the average, one hundred gallons of worse 
tlmn useless water each year, to say nothing 
regarding the more than seven gallons 



86 MICROBES AND MEN. 

of pure alcohol which goes with it. If 
all the pure alcohol consumed were taken 
in the form of beer, it would give an 
average of 140 gallons of water per 
annum for each of the 14,000,000 drinkers. 
But, as nearly all the liquors are consumed by 
6,000,000 habitual drinkers, the above aver- 
ages must be at least doubled when applied 
to them. Many drinkers use five hundred 
gallons of beer per year, or twenty-five gallons 
of alcohol diluted with four hundred and 
seventy-five gallons of water. The average 
time required, in which to remove the surplus 
water so introduced into the blood with the 
alcohol, is fully one hour. During this hour, 
it passes through the lungs, and other parts 
of the body, thirty times, and through the 
heart sixty times. The average work of a 
healthy heart, during each minute, is to cir- 
culate about nine pints of blood over the en- 
tire body, using up enough muscular energy 
to raise over 300 pounds one foot high. 

The beer drinker, who consumes six quarts 
per day, burdens his heart, already weakened 
by the alcohol, with the extra work of circu- 
lating over eleven pints of surplus water, 
while it is being removed from the blood. 
This extra task is equivalent to raising over 
12,000 pounds — more than six tons — one foot 
high each dav of his life* 



THE HEATING PLANT. 87 

The first effect of this extra work is to in- 
crease the size and strength of the heart to 
meet the extra demands, just as extra work 
increases the size and strength of the black- 
smith's right arm. But there is a limit to 
the development of the heart and every other 
muscle. When this limit is reached, the work 
must be lessened or weakness, followed b}^ ex- 
haustion, will follow. A heart may beover- 
worked as well as an arm. When the extra 
burdens are imposed, after the heart 
has reached "the limit of proper devel- 
opement, it continues to increase in size, 
not by the growth of the muscles, but by the 
increase in the size of the cavities, thinning 
and weakening the muscular walls. The 
change in the size and power of the heart, to- 
gether with the diseased condition of the 
muscular fibres, is liable to terminate the in- 
dividual's life at any moment, although he 
may be the ' 'picture of health" so far as ex- 
ternal appearances are concerned. The ex- 
cess of water taken with alcoholic liquors 
interferes with digestion ; with the work of 
the liver ; with that of the blood in supplying 
the tissues with proper nourishment; with 
the escape of carbonic acid gas and the tak- 
ing in of the oxygen ; and with every other 
function. Besides these interferences, the 
getting rid of it imposes great burdens upon 
the kidneys and other organs. 



88 MICROBES AND MEN. 

Anything which interferes with the growth 
of a child, with his usefulness during adult 
life, or with his burial after death, interferes 
with the best interests of society. Each cell 
of which the human body is composed, bears 
a similar relation to the whole number, as 
does each individual to society at large. The 
life history of each individual, in either case, is 
a matter of interest to all. But when the life 
history of a whole group is interfered with, by 
a common enemy, there comes an intense 
struggle for existence. Every cell of the body 
has its periods of growth, usefulness, decay, 
and death, and the consequent necessity of 
removal from its fellows. Anything which 
hastens the removal of the worn-out cells, and 
the growth of new ones to take their places, 
is of benefit to the living organism. 

The more rapidly the cells are renewed, 
(within the limits prescribed by nature) the 
more vitality is manifested by the individual. 
Exercise not only aids in the removal of the 
worn-out cells and in the production of new 
ones, but it strengthens every organ and thus 
enables it to do more and better work: the 
stomach digests better; the liver does its work 
more perfectly; the heart sends the blood 
coursing through the arteries faster; the lungs 
take in more air; the blood is furnished with 
plenty of oxygen; the brain is stimulated; se- 



THE HEATING PLANT. 89 

cretion and excretion are more active; the 
white corpuscles destroy more disease germs; 
and the general welfare and happiness of the 
individual is thereby greatly increased. 

When an arm is paralyzed and remains per- 
fectly inactive, in the course of time, more or 
less of the muscle and nerve cells will be re- 
placed by a fatty substance. 

This substance is sometimes called "grave 
fat," becauseit appears so much like "adipo- 
cere" (wax fat), into which bodies that have 
been buried in marshes often change. Now, 
alcohol, by interfering with so many functions 
of the body, gradually brings about a con- 
dition similar to that which follows a lack of 
exercise. All the benefits, attributed to the 
proper amount of exercise, will be found want- 
ing, and this is true, more especially,in regard 
to the proper removal of the worn-out and 
poisonous matter. The habitual use of even 
moderate quantities of alcohol will produce — 
probably in every case — in a limited number 
of years, more or less of "grave fat," or 
that condition of the tissues termed fatty 
degeneration. This has no reference to 
the accumulation of fat under the skin 
and elsewhere, but to a condition in which 
the cells are replaced by inert fatty particles 
instead of new and active body elements. 
This changing of the natural cells into 



90 MRICOBES AND MEN. 

worse than useless fat, occurs in the heart, 
lungs, liver, kidneys, brain, muscles, and 
perhaps every other organ in the body. 
It is not uncommon for the muscles, and es- 
pecially the liver, of the drunkard to be so 
changed to fat that a bright knife blade will 
be streaked with oil if passed through them. 
This condition develops so slowly and pain- 
lessly that it is not noticed until one or more 
of the organs fail to do their work perfectly, 
or until sudden death is caused by heart failure, 
the breaking of a blood-vessel, or the failure 
of some vital function. 

Fatty degenerations of the difterent organs 
receive different names, according as the 
symptoms are more prominent, such as 
cirrhosis of the liver or kidneys, Bright's dis- 
ease, apoplexy, paralysis, softening of the 
brain, or dropsy. 

There are no known medicines which will 
cure the fatty degeneration of any organ. 
Thousands of deaths occur each year as the 
result of this one change, which takes place 
in the cell structure of the bodies of habitual 
users of alcoholic liquors. Fatty degenera- 
tion may be associated with general emacia- 
tion, as in the case of a raw-boned spirit 
drinker, or with the accumulation of great 
quantities of fat, as in the abnormally large 
abdomen of a beer drinker. In the latter 



THE HEATING PLANT. 91 

case, the excessive quantities of water con- 
sumed, and the alcohol, interfere so much with 
so many vital functions that it causes the 
over-fat condition so often observed. It is 
believed that this unusual fat does not begin 
to accumulate, until after fatty degeneration 
has begun in the liver. 

While the whole body is suffering from the 
imperfect work done by the lungs, when un- 
der the influence of alcohol, the tissues of the 
lungs themselves are being more or less in- 
jured, not only by the general derangement, 
but also by the direct action of the alcohol. 

The lo wering of the vitality, and the de- 
ranged condition of the tissues, lead to many 
fatal cases of congestion and inflammation, 
and to very many cases of consumption. A 
peculiarly fatal form of this disease, which 
often attacks steady drinkers, has been known, 
for thirty years , as " drunkard 's consumption .' ' 

We have already learned that consumption 
is a germ disease, and that anything which 
lessens the vitality and activity of the white 
corpuscles, increases the death-rate from germ 
diseases. This is especially true in regard to 
consumption. It is not possible for any one 
habitually to use ordinary quantities of al- 
cohol and have perfectly healthy lungs. 

RECAPITULATION. 

Breathing is carried on by muscular con- 



92 MICROBES AND MEN. 

tractions which arelessened,both in force and 
frequency, by the action of alcohol. Alcohol 
has an affinity for the coloring matter of the 
trillions of red corpuscles which carry the life- 
giving oxygen to all the tissues. This injures 
or destroys the corpuscles and lessens the 
amount of oxygen taken to the tissues, inter- 
feres with the removal of waste and poison- 
ous matters, lowers the temperature and 
vitality, and counteracts the good effects of 
exercise. While the alcohol is injuring the 
blood, it is also doing harm to the delicate 
membranes of the air-cells, causing much 
sickness and many deaths. The large quan- 
tities of water taken with the alcohol, or to 
quench the thirst caused by it, thins the blood, 
overworks the heart and interferes with the 
work of every other organ and tissue. The 
imperfect preparation of the food, and the 
imperfect work done by the lungs and other 
organs, while under the influence of alcohol, 
lead to a painless but very fatal disease of 
the liver, kidneys, brain, heart and other 
organs known as fatty degeneration. It is 
believed that fatty degeneration of the liver 
precedes the excessive and unnatural accu- 
mulation of fat, which is so frequently seen in 
beer drinkers. 

Alcohol does not change into heat or any 
kind of force or energy, but acts directly up- 



THE HEATING PLANT. 93 

on the blood, and upon other tissue cells, 
thereby lessening heat production, and pro- 
ducing tissue degeneration. When given to 
the sick, it acts as an anesthetic, like chloro- 
form or ether, serving to quiet the patients 
restlessness, lessen his consciousness of pain, 
and also favors the retention of both the 
cause and product of the disease. While the 
patient appears and feels more comfortable, 
the diseased and overburdened system is 
being compelled to remove an additional load. 
All this adds greatly to the number of fatali- 
ties. 



CHAPTER VII. 



HEADQUARTERS. 

The whole nervous system is made up of 
cells, which generate nerve force and receive 
impressions, and of fibres, which convey these 
forces and impressions 
to different parts of the 
body. The average size 
of the cells is about 
V^oooth of an inch in diam- 
eter, while some of the 
fibres are only ^isoooth of 
an inch in diameter. Each 
cell has one or more fi- 
bres attached toit,toput 
it into communication 
with other parts of the 
body , much as every "cell" 
in a telegraph battery 
has connection by wire 
with others. The brain weighs about fifty 
ounces. Its surface is covered to the depth of 




Fig. 25. — Nerve-cells an 
fibres. Highly magni 
fied. 



HEADQUARTERS. 95 

one fourtn of an inch with cells. An innumer- 
able host of fibres pass from cell to cell, and to 
every part of the body, and these make up 
the white matter of this most wonderful of' 
organs. In this outer layer of cells, is the seat 
of the mind. This envelope is so folded that 
it presents a surface of about four square 
feet. That is, the average person has about 
four square feet of mind, one fourth of an inch 
in thickness! Of course some brains are 
' 'smaller' ' and "thinner" than that. It is es- 
timated that this part of the brain is com- 
posed of 500,000,000,000 cells. No wonder 
that the mind, especially a small one, occas- 
sionally wanders or gets lost. The whole 
brain is soft and gelatinous, containing 79 or 
80 per cent of water, or rather more of this 
fluid than the blood. The work of this or- 
gan is so great and so important, that nearly 
one fifth of all the blood in the body is sent 
to it. 

It has charge of, and controls more or less, 
every other organ and function of the body. 
When an impression is made upon any part 
of the body, as from poison in the stomach, 
or by an injury to the skin, information is at 
once sent to the brain, and it immediately 
attempts to send back along the nerve fibers 
the relief needed, and also to send a word of 
warning to all other endangered parts. This 



96 MICROBES AND MEN. 

perfect and constant intercommunication of 
the brain, and smaller nerve centers, with 
every organ and tissue of the body, is of abso- 
lute importance. The health and safety of 
every part, and the successful discharge of 
every function, depend upon this perfect ad- 
justment of duties. The action of the whole 
nervous system depends upon that property 
of protoplasm which is known as sensibility 
or irritability — that which shows that it is 
alive. Therefore, anything which lessens the 
action or sensibility of the brain or nerves 
tends to dry up the very fountains of life. 

When a medicine is taken into the system, 
its effects are measured by the manifestation 
of increased or diminished sensibility of the 
modified cells of protoplasm of the nervous 
system and of other tissues. Medicines are 
lifeless objects which never become a part of 
the living body, but are always expelled as 
intruders. The influence which the medicine 
has upon the cells of the body, while it is in 
contact with them, is known as its effects. It 
is not an active agent, but it modifies the 
activity of the tissues by its contact with 
them. When a medicine changes, by chemi- 
cal action, the composition of the tissues, its 
effects are apt to be more marked and more 
enduring. Such remedies as strychnine and 
digitalis increase the activity of certain 



HEADQUARTERS. 97 

tissues, while opium and aconite depress them, 
without causing important changes to take 
place in their structure. Medicines are given 
(at least ought to be given) to correct some 
departure from the natural activities of the 
cells. The disturbance of the life work of 
the cells — disease — may be produced by a 
poison, w^hich changes their action or chemi- 
cally changes their structure, or perhaps by 
some interference with the nutrition and life 
of the cells which is not yet explained. It is 
not possible for an active medicine to pass 
through the tissues of a healthy body with- 
out doing harm. It cannot be of any benefit 
to them. 

After alcohol has been introduced into the 
stomach, and has passed through the liver, 
the right side of the heart, the lungs, and 
then the left side of the heart, it goes to every 
part of the body unchanged in its condition, 
the same as other poisons. As one fifth of 
the blood reaches the brain, so does one fifth 
of the alcohol. Immediately upon its arrival 
it not only begins its work of damaging this 
important and delicate organ, but it also 
commences the process of damning both soul 
and body. The fact that alcohol has a 
double action on the cells should not be lost 
sight of for a moment. It lessens that funda- 
mental property of protoplasm called sensa- 



98 MICROBES AND MEN. 

tion, as does opium, aconite, and other nar- 
cotic poisons, and also acts as a chemical 
agent in extracting water from the cells, thus 
changing their structure. When there is an 
excited condition, alcohol has a beneficial ef- 
fect by lessening the over active state of the 
cells. But while it it is producing this desir- 
able effect it is also doing untold harm in 
changing the structure of the cells and tissues. 
As there are many other medicines which are 
more useful as narcotics, or quieting remedies, 
and which do not have the active chemical 
affinities so manifest in alcohol, it is very 
evident that alcohol is never the most desira- 
ble medicine to use under any circumstances. 
It always does harm, for it is never desirable 
to produce the chemical change referred to. 
Whenever used as a medicine, the harm done 
may so outweigh its good effects that the ex- 
periment is of doubtful expediency, so long as 
there are other more useful and less objection- 
able remedies. 

The above brief statements, together with 
what has been said elsewhere, make it certain 
that the following statements must be ad- 
mitted as established and unchanging truths: 
— Alcohol is never the most desirable medi- 
cine. It is never harmless in health or 
disease. It always produces disease. These 
statements are especially true in regard to 



HEADQUARTERS. 99 

the brain whose extremely delicate and sensi- 
tive tissues take notice of everything. The 
wonderful sensitiveness of the nervous system 
is best illustrated by the following state- 
ments, common in our text books on physics. 
A ray of red light has 39,000 vibrations or 
waves to the inch, and of violet, 57,500; the 
other colors of the rainbow have wave 
lengths intermediate between these, the aver- 
age (green) having about 50,000 to the inch. 
There are 63,360 inches in a mile, and light 
travels at the rate of 186,000 miles per 
second, so that during each second, while we 
are looking at a green object, our eyes receive 
50,000x63,360x186,000 waves of light. A 
red object will give us a slightly less total 
number of waves, and a violet one a some- 
what great total. If the nerves of the eye 
can distinguish between the slight variations 
in the total number of waves of light, as be- 
tween indigo and violet, when they are being 
received at the rate of more than seven 
hundred trillions per second ; if the ear can 
distinguish 38,000 different sounds ; if, by the 
sense of smell, a dog can track his master 
through a city, even though the man has just 
put on a pair of new boots ; and if the brain 
itself is capable of memory, thought, and an 
infinite amount of education, it seems quite 
safe to conclude that the brain and nerves are 



100 MICROBES AND MEN. 

injured every time they are under the influence 
of such a narcotic poison, and active chemical 
agent, as alcohol. 

It is believed that the brain never fully re- 
covers from the effects of a single intoxica- 
tion. The harm produced by the habitual 
use of alcohol is in direct proportion to the 
length of tirhe it is used and the amount con- 
sumed. But whatever be the amount, or 
length of time, there is always some harm 
done to the brain and body. 

When a small amount of alcohol is taken 
into the stomach, it usually produces an 
agreeable sensation. The nerves of sensation 
are more or less paralyzed, quieting the com- 
plaints of the much abused organ, and the 
nerves which control the blood supply in the 
lining membrane are so paralyzed that the 
amount supplied is temporarily increased. 
The effect is much the same as that produced 
at the beginning of a warm meal; the individ- 
ual feels better natured and more at peace 
with himself and all the world. The alcohol 
soon leaves the stomach and in a few mo- 
ments has reached the brain, where the 
amount of blood is increased by reason of 
the same paralyzing influences. The increase 
in the amount of blood in the brain seems to 
increase mental strength and activity. But 
the appearances to others, and the sensations 



HEADQUARTERS. , 101 

to the individual, are as deceptive as are the 
appearances and sensations in regard to 
muscular strength. All narcotic poisons 
lead the individual, who is under their in- 
fluence, to believe that the strength and 
activity of both mind and muscle have been 
increased. Dr. Lander Brunton says: — "The 
influence of alcohol upon psychical processes 
is curious, for while it renders them much 
slower the individual under its influence be- 
lieves them to be much quicker than usual. " 
The physiological effects of alcohol seem to 
be about the same npw as they were three 
thousand years ago when Solomon wrote: 
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, 
and whosoever is deceived thereby is not 
wise." 

Alcohol takes a part of the water from the 
cells and fibres, making the brain slightly 
more firm and compact, and a part of it 
passes into the brain tissues to unite with the 
water which remains there. This accounts 
for the fact that the brain retains more alco- 
hol than any other organ except the liver. 
Of course these chemical effects are not so 
great as are the narcotic or stupefying effects. 
When larger quantities are used for a longer 
time the changes in the structure are well 
marked. The whole brain is somewhat 
smaller and harder, there is more fluid in the 



102 MICROBES AND MEN. 

ventricles, the membranes are thicker, and the 
cells smaller. Fatty degeneration may cause 
the rupture of a blood-vessel and sudden 
death, or this disease may cause softening of 
the brain and thus end the habitual drinker's 
life. The action of the brain, and the remain- 
der of the nervous system, is affected as well 
as its structure, as is shown in a heavy lum- 
bering gait, an unsteady hand, an irregular 
action of the heart, and in the general im- 
paired state of the senses of hearing, seeing, 
smelling, tasting, and feeling. 

The blood and brain contain almost the 
same proportion of water and solid matter. 

One circulates rapidly as fluid, while the 
other retains as perfect a form as any of the 
more solid tissues of the body. No one has 
been able fully to comprehend the wonderful 
composition and manifold offices of the blood. 
What then shall be said of the efforts of the 
mind to comprehend itself and that most 
mysterious of all structures through which it 
manifests itself? The brain is so exceedingly- 
delicate and sensitive that the twenty-fifth 
part of a grain of atrophine, or the fourth 
part of a grain of morphine, will produce a 
profound impression upon it, even when such 
almost invisible quantities of these medicines 
are mixed with the sixteen pints of rapidly 
moving blood. These impressions, amount- 



HEADQUARTERS. 103 

ing to unconsciousness in many cases, are 
produced by the medicine, while in contact 
with the protoplasm of which the brain cells 
are composed. If the brain cells are so sensi- 
tive that a quantity of vegetable matter not 
half th^ size of a pin's head, and diluted by 
so much blood, will so modify their action as 
to amount to almost a temporary annihila- 
tion of that manifestation called mind, what 
then must be the effect of an introduction of 
large quantities of a substance which not on- 
ly interferes with the proper action of the 
cells, upon whose activity the mind depends, 
but also attacks their structure as a chemical 
agent? The action of the whole nervous sys- 
tem (whether natural or otherwise) is the 
foundation element in health and disease. So 
the action of the cells of the brain is the found- 
ation of the health and disease of the mind. 
Any substance which interferes with the ac- 
tion of the brain must interfere with the 
mind. This is doubly true of any substance 
which combines the properties of a narcotic 
poison and an active chemical agent, so that 
both the action and the structure are modi- 
fied by its use. Therefore, it is not possi- 
ble FOR ANY PERSON ADDICTED TO THE USE 
OF ALCOHOLIC LIQUORS TO HAVE A PERFCTLY 
HEALTHY BRAIN AND A PERFECTLY SOUND 
MIND. 



104 MICROBES AND MEN. 

Some of the painfully frequent manifesta- 
tions of deranged minds caused by the 
habitual use of alcohol, are ill-temper, de- 
spondency, loss of moral sense, brutality, 
monomania, delirium tremens, insanity, and 
idiocy. It is strange that anyone can be so 
foolish as to believe that no permanent harm 
can be done by a substance which has the 
property of annihilating, so completely, the 
powers of both the mind and body, as is seen 
in a case of intoxication. If a medicine has 
power to change the structure or action of 
parts of the body in disease, beneficially, it 
also has power to make changes in a healthy 
body. If the healthy body is changed, either 
in structure or action, to that extent, it is 
changed from a healthy condition, and is there- 
fore, diseased. All active medicines are not 
only not harmless to the healthy, but are 
active poisons. 

The Creator has given to our organs and 
tissues a wonderful amount of ability to ad- 
just themselves to varying conditions and 
circumstances, and to repair much of the 
damage that may be done them in any way. 
Those functions of our brains and bodies 
which develop as a part of our existence, 
such as digestion, secretion, and excretion, 
are called natural. All these functions are 
carried on by the combined activities of the 



HEADQUARTERS. 105 

cells which compose the several tissues; all 
mental activities by the cells of the brain ; 
secretion and excretion by the epithelial cells 
which cover the organs intended for these 
purposes; all muse alar movements by the 
contraction of the cells of the muscular fibres; 
and so on throughout the whole body . When 
the nervous system reports that all the cells 
of the body have their wants supplied, and 
that they are doing their work properly, 
then there is perfect health, and life is a joyous 
reality. When the nerves report that there is 
injury, want, or unnatural action, in any part 
of the body, then there is distress or disease. 
Education of the mind and body is simply 
the process of encouraging the cells to do a 
thing so many times that it becomes a second 
nature. That which is done so many times 
that no further effort is required to keep it up, 
is called a habit. Habit may refer to an ac- 
tion of the mind, as thought or conduct; to 
that of the muscles, as shown in unnatural 
attitudes assumed in standing, or walking; 
or to the work done by the cells and tissues 
when disposing of unnecessary quantities of 
food and drink, toiling under the influences of 
poisons, or calling for accustomed quantities 
of food and drink at regular intervals. 
Habit, then, is an acquired or second nature, 
and becomes more powerful than the first na- 



3 06 MICROBES AND MEN. 

ture, which it has overcome and displaced. 
Education, whether good or bad, and from 
whatever source, is the forming of a habit of 
doing, in a seemingly natural way, that whi9h 
is not quite natural. Interfering with a habit 
is going contrary to the acquired nature, and 
it produces more or less inconvenience, even 
positive suffering. If the cells have been do- 
ing their work for a long time under the in- 
fluence of a poison like opium, tobacco, or 
alcohol, and then the influencing agent be 
completely withheld, the cells will send up a 
protest against the interference, often amount- 
ing to unendurable agony. Until the cells 
can adjust themselves to the changed condi- 
tions, they are as uncomfortable as a wasp- 
waisted lady of fashion would be, if she 
should leave off her "stays." Habit, being 
a quality, or condition, of our bodies, ac- 
quired by use, then, under the law that all vi- 
tal actions tend to repeat themselves, and to 
be more easily performed the more they are 
repeated, it is easy to understand how one 
may grow until it is all-powerful in an indi- 
vidual^ life. When a glass of any alcoholic 
liquor is taken, it feeds and strengthens or\]y 
one thing — a growing habit. It is one more 
lesson in the education of a second nature 
which may become stronger than the first na- 
ture, and displace it. As the habit grows 



HEADQUARTERS. 107 

stronger, the powers of the body and mind 
grow weaker from the narcotic and chemical 
effects of the poison. The desire to be a man 
among men, the sense of duty to one's family 
and country, the moral sense, abhorrence of 
evil, love of home and family, fear of the 
consequences of an evil life to both body and 
soul, are all lowered, and finally paralyzed, by 
the same agent which feeds and strengthens 
the habit. Few take into account that, along 
with the growing habit, there is a constant 
failing of power to resist, and thus millions 
have been wont to cry out for help when it 
was too late. No young man should be so 
fool-hardy as to believe himself wise in such 
matters, and so much stronger in mind and 
body than most of his fellow-men, that he 
can do with safety that which experience 
proves to be utterly ruinous to many, and 
science proves to be injurious to all. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE COMING MAN. 

Each individual, of all the higher species of 
animals, begins its life history as a single 
germ-cell which has been profoundly im- 
pressed by a sperm-cell that has become a 
part of it. The sum total of all future possi- 
bilities is then wrapped up in this one ferti- 
lized cell — this minute speck of protoplasm. 
This cell is capable of taking food and pro- 
ducing other cells, which can also take food 
and produce still other cells, and so on till the 
largest and most complicated being is built 
up. The full grown animal then is the resul- 
tant of two sets of forces, one being made up 
of the influences of the life histories of all its 
ancestors, and the other, of all the forces 
which acted to modify the development of 
the cell into the mature animal. Every stock- 
breeder is guided by these universal laws of 
nature. He knows full well that like pro- 
duces like in more than one sense of the word. 



THE COMING MAN. 109 

He also knows that such influences as tem- 
perature, food, exercise, and fear, have much 
to do with the development of the animal, 
both before and after birth. 

When an animal acquires vicious habits, it 
is considered unfit for breeding purposes, be- 
cause of the liability of transmitting the same 
characteristics to its descendants. Varieties 
of dogs have been trained to do a certain 
thing till it has become a second nature, and 
more or less of this acquired knowledge has 
been transmitted to the next generation. 
The pointer, setter, retriever, and watch- 
dog, are examples of transmitted and fixed 
specialities. The great difference between the 
domestic animals, and the wild ones from 
which they have descended, both as to 
habits and in the structure of their bodies, 
proves that training and other influences have 
much to do in determining the life history of 
individuals of succeeding generations. The 
differences seen in human race characteristics 
show how the body and mind may be modi- 
fied by surroundings and habits, for, all man- 
kind started from a common stock. The 
difference then between the thoroughbred and 
the scrub is one of inheriting the effects of 
care, or of neglect. The k difference between the 
instincts of a watch-dog and a greyhound is 
one of inherited education. 



110 MICROBES AND MEN. 

No stockman expects good results if he is 
foolish enough to breed from sick, half-starved, 
over- worked, or ill-formed animals, or from 
good stock kept in unhealthful buildings or 
fed upon unwholesome food. If one or both 
of the cells, uniting to form the cell which is 
the beginning of the animals life, are weak or 
imperfect from any cause, or if the conditions 
before or after birth are unfavorable to de- 
velopment, then the individual will be more 
or less defective in body and mind. Each 
animal inherits much of what its parents in- 
herited, some of what the parents acquired 
themselves, more or less of the conditions of 
both body and mind of the parents when the 
life oY the first cell began, and the results of 
the influences brought to bear upon the 
mother's life before its birth. Every wise and 
successful stock-breeder acts upon his knowl- 
edge of these recognized and never-failing laws 
of heredity only while endeavoring to im- 
prove his herds. Of late, scientists and other 
thoughtful people are beginning to recognize 
the great importance of applying these well- 
know laws of heredit}' to the improvement 
of the human animal. The great mass of 
humanity, however, have not even considered 
such a thing. 

It is a well-known fact that a person with- 
out any inherited tendencies towards a disease, 



THE COMING MAN. Ill 

may contract one, such as consumption, and 
afterwards impart to his off-spring an en- 
feebled constitution, with grave liabilities to- 
ward the development of the same disease. 
This is as true regarding those diseases and 
diseased conditions which are developed by 
the voluntary acts of the individual, as it is 
of those which are inherent and unavoidable. 

Much has already been said regarding the 
disastrous effect of alcohol upon the tissues 
and functions of the body and brain, but the 
most awful of these frightful statements is 
yet to be made. The evil effects produced by 
the habitual use of alcohol are hereditary. 
Whatever changes are made in the physical 
features, or mental condition, will appear to a 
greater or less degree in ones descendants for 
one or more generations. In the case of the 
alcohol user, the sins against the laws of 
nature are often visited, in a most fearful 
manner, upon his children to the third and 
fourth generation. Such passions as anger, 
fear, and jealousy, and the tendencies to 
gluttony and drunkenness, are liable to be 
transmitted to offspring by direct constitu- 
tional inheritance, especially if both parents 
are alike affected. 

Alcohol not only changes men and women 
of brilliant minds to demented beings, but 
may so change the vital powers of an infant, 



112 MICROBES AND MEN. 

before it sees the light of day, that its after 
life will be a misery to itself and a mockery 
to the state of civilization around it. That 
form of drunkenness known as dipsomania, 
which breaks out, from time to time, into un- 
controllable paroxysms, is a prolific cause of 
idiocy, suicidal mania, and insanity among 
the children of those thus affected. It is be- 
lieved that fully one half of the idiots and 
imbeciles of large cities have had parents who 
were notoriously drunken in their habits. 
Dr. Howe, of Mass., cites the case of a 
drunkard who was the parent of seven idiots. 
Where the inheritence does not take the form 
of some well defined disease, it often appears 
in a defective physical development or a 
mental weakness predisposed to intemperance 
or to disease. Dr. Parker, of New York, says 
that over ninety per cent of the children, born 
in the slums of that city, die before the end of 
their first year. This fearful mortality is 
largely due to enfeebled constitutions in- 
herited from drunken parents. 

Scientists have just made a very interesting 
and valuable discovery, which shows clearly 
that impressions which are made upon the 
cells of the parent's body, will modify the life- 
history of the offspring. It has been proven 
that the immunity against certain germ dis- 
eases, which has been acquired by innocula- 



THE COMING MAX. 11 3 

tion, is inherited by the offspring. This is 
found to be true in the case of either parent. 
These statements do not seem so surprising 
when we remember that every cell of the 
young animal does just the kind of work that 
was done by the corresponding cell in the pa- 
rent's body. 

If the cells of the parent body acquire the 
habit of secreting a substance which is so dis- 
agreeable or poisonous to disease germs that 
they will not multiply in it, why should not 
the cell of the offspring do the same thing? 
Past generations are largely responsible for 
the criminals, cranks, lunatics, and imbeciles 
of the present. Every child should inherit a 
sound body and a sound mind. If it does 
not, it has been robbed of that which is a 
thousand-fold more valuable than millions of 
money. The parent who squanders the fami- 
ly inheritance, and leaves his child a pauper, 
is called a scoundrel. But when he squanders 
his powers of body and mind , and entails upon 
his child a physical and mental bankruptcy, 
the whole matter is very unkindly attributed 
to the dispensations of a "kind (?) provi- 
dence." 

In Modern Medicine and Bacteriological 
Review, for March, 1894, Dr. Kellogg says: — 
4 'That these weaknesses and abnormalities of 
body and mind are perpetuated by heredit} T , 



114 MICROBES AND MEN. 

is no longer a question upon which there is 
any difference of opinion. It is as clearly set- 
tled that mental and moral characteristics 
are inherited as that the color of the hair and 
eyes, or other physical characteristics, are 
thus derived. It is equally true, although the 
fact is often forgotten, that the resemblance 
of the internal structures of the child, to 
those of his parents, is as close as the likeness 
which can be traced in the external features. 
Heredity is a force which operates in the most 
thorough-going manner. Every human being 
is the product of a principle which has been 
taking careful notes of the lives and habits, 
the neglects, the excesses, and the abuses, of 
every crime against the body, through all the 
generations from Adam down to the individ- 
ual man in question/ ' 

In The American Medical Temperance 
Quarterly, for April, 1894, we find the follow- 
ing taken from a lecture by Dr. T. D. Crothers: 
— "A careful study of many cases by various 
observers shows that heredity is the most 
prominent cause and is present in over 80 
per cent of all inebriates. Another active 
factor, more apparent and controllable in the 
problem of inebriety, is that of marriage. At 
present the indiscriminate marriages are 
largely influential in intensifying the alcoholic 
stream. Criminals, paupers, inebriates, and 



THE COMING MAX. 115 

others, notoriously far down on the road to 
dissolution, are permitted to marry and raise 
children freighted with a truly frightful legacy 
of degeneration. It is this defective heredity, 
increased and intensified by marriages with 
equally bad stock, that is the great fountain- 
spring from which inebriatcy comes. Alcohol, 
of all other drugs, seems to intensify and pro- 
voke disease and the most favorable con- 
ditions for the destruction of cell and nerve 
force.' ' 

It is not expected that a defective machine 
will d*o perfect work. Neither should a 
defective organ or body be expected to 
act perfectly. If the production of new 
cells be the required work of an unhealthy 
body, then it is reasonable to expect that 
the cells will be more or less imper- 
fect. But if these new cells are destined to 
become the beginnings of new lives, it is 
reasonable to believe that these new lives 
will be more or less defective in their very be- 
ginnings. If it be the work of an unhealthy 
stomach and liver to prepare proper food for 
the growing cells, it is also reasonable to be- 
lieve that the cells will not be properly 
nourished. 

If the one cell which begins a new life be 
formed of two cells, one or both of which 
have been developed in unhealthy bodies, or, 



116 MICROBES AND MEN. 

if all the nourishment which it receives while 
producing other cells and arranging them 
into nerves, muscles, bones, glands, and brain 
of a being "made in the image of God," be 
prepared by unhealthy organs, it is not un- 
reasonable to conclude that many children 
are born with defective bodies and unbalanced 
minds, because of the unhealthy condition of 
one or both of the parents. But, when we see 
added to all this the potent influences of a 
narcotic poison and active chemical agent, 
deranging the whole body by interfering with 
the work of every organ and injuring every 
cell, we are certain that the habitual use of 
alcohol, even in moderate quantities, is the 
fruitful cause of much of the feebleness, de- 
formity, disease, and death, among infants, 
and of the evil tempers, bad tendencies, 
stupidity, epilepsy, hysteria, insanity, and 
idiocy, of older children. When the influence 
of the evil spirit (the devil in solution) which 
causes such diseases and tendencies to be in- 
herited, is added to those already in force in 
each generation, the successive generations 
will have to suffer, more and more, the conse- 
quences of such acts which, if not checked ere 
long, will result in the extinction of the whole 
family. 

If the laws of heredity are so unfailing that 
a part of a dog's education appears as a part 



THE COMING MAN. 117 

of the instinct of the next generation, no 
doubt that the change in the structure and 
functions of the organs, the profound im- 
pressions upon every cell of the body pro- 
duced by alcohol, have much to do in shaping 
the future destiny of the coming man (or 
woman) both in time and eternity. 



CHAPTER IX. 



jug-or-not's younger brother. 

Physicians, botanists, and chemists unitein 
pronouncing tobacco the most deadly poison 
known, with the exception of prussic acid. 
Its poisonous properties are due to a heavy, 
oily substance, called nicotine. This sub- 
stance is so active that it produces uncon- 
sciousness in thirty seconds, and a total ex- 
tinction of life within three minutes. Less 
than a drop will kill a dog in ten minutes. 
Small birds are quickly killed by inhaling its- 
fumes. These statements can be verified by 
anyone who desires to experiment with this 
dangerous poison. 

The proportion of nicotine in tobacco var- 
ies from two to eight per cent, the average 
being about five per cent, or 384 drops in 
each pound. This amount is sufficient to 
destroy 200 men or 400 dogs. 

At least 500,000,000 pounds of tobacco are 
consumed each year in this country, or an 



JUG-OR-NOTS YOUNGER BROTHER. 119 

average of about 36 pounds for each family. 
Now, if each of the 14,000,000 families of this 
country were to keep 3,595 boarders, and 
7,200 dogs, the families, their boarders and 
their dogs could all be destroyed, in ten min- 
utes, by the nicotine which could be extracted 
from the amount of tobacco annually con- 
sumed. In other words, the raw nicotine in a 
year's supply of tobacco is sufficient to des- 
troy 50,000,000,000 people and 100,000,- 
000,000 dogs, provided both kinds of ani- 
mals were not accustomed to its effects. The 
people of the United States consume about 
one-ninth of what is produced in the whole 
world, (4,500,000,000 pounds annually.) 
There is nicotine enough in these four and one- 
half billion pounds of average tobacco to de- 
populate 60 worlds. The nicotine in one 
week's supply of tobacco would kill, in six 
minutes, every man, woman, and child on the 
face of the earth, provided none of them were 
accustomed to its effects. A single cigar con- 
tains enough of the poison to kill two men. 
Tobacco smoke is so poisonous that it will 
kill an infant almost instantly. When a small 
piece of tobacco leaf is laid upon the tongue 
of an adult, or a small amount of smoke is 
inhaled, alarming symptoms of acute poison- 
ing appear in less than twenty minutes. The 
skin becomes cold and clammy, the pulse 



1 20 MICROBES AND MEN. 

quick and feeble, there is a death-like pallor, 
dizziness, faintness, nausea, vomiting, and 
sometimes convulsions ensue which terminate 
in death. When the body is examined after 
death, a remarkable pallor of the tissues is 
found. The lungs appear greyish and are so 
dense that they sink in water instead of float- 
ing as usual. The heart and brain are en- 
gorged with a very dark blood. The stomach 
presents some slight traces of inflammation, 
some effusions of blood, and occasional spots 
which appear like bruises. Children are much 
more susceptible to the poisonous effects of 
tobacco than are adults. Carelessness and 
the desire to form the tobacco habit, result in 
hundreds of fatal cases of acute nicotine pois- 
oning, annually. 

The human system possesses the wonderful 
faculty of accommodating itself to circum- 
stances. This makes it possible for the 
cautious beginner gradually to increase the 
quantity used until an enormous amount can 
be used daily without immediately fatal 
effects. When the system becomes accustomed 
to its use, the injurious effects are not so ap- 
parent; many being able to resist its bad 
effects for a long period, a very few living to 
extreme old age. But the great majority of 
people are not able to use tobacco in any 
form without noticeable injurious effects. It 



JUG-OR-NOTS YOUNGER BROTHER. 121 

is believed that not less than twenty-five 
thousand lives are lost, each year, in the 
United States, from the effects of using this 
most poisonous substance. It undermines 
the constitution, weakens the heart, lessens 
the sensibility of the nervous system, inter- 
feres with digestion, deranges the blood, and 
wastes the vital energies. The mischief 
which has been wrought often goes unnoticed 
until some extra strain is brought upon the 
system, such as some great mental or physi- 
cal exertion, an attack of pneumonia, fever, 
or some other severe disease. Then the con- 
stitution breaks down like a worm-eaten 
bridge, sound to all outward appearances 
but going to pieces under an additional load. 
The evil effects of chronic nicotine-poisoning 
upon the youth of this country, are partially 
set forth in that prince of medical journals, 
The Bacteriological World and Modern Medi- 
cine, for Dec, 1891, page 66:— "Dr. Jay W. 
Seaver, medical director of the Yale gymnasi- 
um, and professor of physical culture in Yale 
University, has been making a careful study 
during the last eight years, of the influence of 
tobacco upon development. His statistics 
show that non-smokers were 20 per cent 
taller than smokers, 25 per cent heavier, and 
have a lung capacity 66 per cent greater. 
These figures are wonderfully significant, es- 



122 MICROBES AND MEN. 

pecially the last. A man who has a lung 
capacity two thirds greater than that of 
another man has an immense physical advan- 
tage. His prospects for long life are greater, 
and his physical efficiency will be certainly as 
much greater as his breathing capacity. A 
man with small lung capacity is like a fur- 
nace with a small draft. All his vital activi- 
ties must be inferior to those of a man of 
greater lung capacity. 

Similar observations have been made at 
Amherst college, with like results. In a re- 
cent graduating class, the non-smokers were 
found to have gained in weight over the 
smokers nearly one fourth. The non-smok- 
ers surpassed the smokers by a gain in height 
of 37 per cent, in chest circumference 42 per 
cent, and lung capacity 8.36 cubic inches 
(about 75 per cent.) 

Science recently published the results of 
an experimental inquiry into the condition of 
thirty-eight boys of all classes of society, of 
average health, who had used tobacco for 
different periods ranging from two months to 
two years. Of the thirty -eight, twenty-seven 
showed severe constitutional injury and 
stunted growth. In thirty-two there were 
irregularities of the heart action, stomach 
disorders, cough, and a craving for alcoholic 
liquors. Thirteen had intermittent pulse, and 



JUG-OR-NOT'S YOUNGER BROTHER. 123 

one had consumption. All were induced to 
discontinue the use of tobacco, and as a re- 
sult, in six months one half were free from 
their former symptoms, and by the end of the 
year the entire number had recovered, thanks 
to nature's recuperative forces. * * Hun- 
dreds of thousands of persons are living in a 
state of chronic poisoning from the use of 
tobacco. Their vital powers are depressed to 
such an extent that their physical, mental, 
and perhaps moral efficiency are vastly infer- 
ior to what they might be without the de- 
pressing influence of this toxic incubus. 

The evidence of these statistics is over- 
whelmingly convincing, and ought to set 
every intelligent young man who is beginning 
to patronize the pipe or cigar to thinking 
earnestly whether he can afford to subject 
himself during the best part of his life to 
chronic nicotine poisoning.' ' 

The statements of Dr. Seaver, of Yale, are 
based upon observations made and compiled 
from the records of a class of 187 men during 
their four years college course. Such reliable 
statistics, as those above quoted from Yale 
and Amherst, are quite rare and very valuable. 
It is believed that no person who uses tobacco, 
during the growing period of his life, ever fully 
develops, either physically or mentally. The 
tobacco-using school boy seldom succeeds as 



124 MICROBES AND MEN. 

a student, and very seldom develops into a 
useful, prosperous, and happy man. He is 
often careless regarding his personal appear- 
ance and of the wishes and rights of others, 
becomes nervous, ill-tempered, sluggish, and 
fearful of impending danger. This fear of 
future calamity, sometimes develops into such 
a state of horror that it leads to suicide. 

Dr. L. Bremer, late physician to the St. 
Vincent's Institution for the Insane, at St. 
Louis, in a paper read before the St. Louis 
Medical Society, said: — "It may look like 
overstating and exaggerating things, but I 
know whereof I speak, when I say that 
tobacco when habitually used by the young 
leads to a species of imbecility; that the 
juvenile smoker will lie, cheat, and steal, 
which he would not, had he let tobacco alone. 
This kind of insanity I have observed in quite 
a number of cases at the St. Vincent's. The 
patients presented all the characteristics of 
young incorrigibles. The} r had exhausted the 
indulgence of their parents, who saw no 
other way to protect them from their insane 
pranks, than to commit them to the insti- 
tution. 

I do not know whether a lasting improve- 
ment was effected in any of them. There was 
not one amongst them that was able to com- 
prehend that tobacco was injuring him ; they 



JUG-OR-NOTS YOUNGER BROTHER. 125 

were constantly on the lookout for obtaining 
it, by begging, stealing or bribing, and re- 
garded the deprivation of the drug as a 
punishment. The sense of propriety, the 
faculty of distinguishing between right and 
wrong, was lost. The father of one of them 
who looked upon his son only as an aggra- 
vated case of bad boy, told me that he him- 
self had been smoking ever since his 10th 
year and it never had affected him. In reality, 
being only 45 years old, he was a wreck, 
physically and mentally, though he came of 
health\^ stock. He could not or would not 
comprehend that tobacco was gradually un- 
dermining his own mind and body, although 
his wife and his friends knew and saw it." 

When tobacco or tobacco-smoke is taken 
into the mouth it greatW increases the flow 
of saliva and exhausts the glands of the 
mouth, leaving the mouth and throat in a 
more or less inflamed condition. This irri- 
tated condition of the throat is usually mis- 
taken for thirst. As the supposed thirst is 
not relieved by water, but can be subdued by 
alcohol, it is not uncommon for the tobacco 
user to become an alcohol drinker. In fact, 
very many of those who learn to use one 
narcotic poison soon learn to use more than 
one. 

Tobacco interferes with digestion, circula- 



126 MICROBES AND MEN. 

tion, respiration, and other vital processes, to 
such an extent that the user is generally sev- 
eral pounds lighter than what ought to be 
his usual weight, many even becoming great- 
ly emaciated. Those who best resist the bad 
effects of tobacco are possessed of great 
physical endurance, but it may be said that 
they are not always endowed with great 
mental ability. Dyspepsia, diseased heart, 
nervousness, general debility, anxiety, "blue 
devils," and insanity, to which all tobacco 
users are liable, and from which so many suf- 
fer, detract greatly from the sum total of 
human health and happiness. 

Fig. 26 represents the pulse of H. F. C. (see 
descriptions of Figs. 19, 20 and 28) as affect- 
ed by smoking two cigars, after abstaining 
from the use of tobacco for ten days. 

A trace was taken every five minutes. He 
began smoking after the first trace was tak- 
en, stopping at the fourteenth. The pulse 
rates were; 84, 90, 97, 99, 100, 99, 101, 102- 
101, 104, 103, 102, 104, 106, 105, 102. For 
each fifteen minutes after taking the last 
trace, the pulse rates were; 92, 86, 84, 89, 83, 
80, 84, 85, 83, 83, 80. At the close of this 
latter period, or two hours and fifty-five min- 
utes after the second cigar was finished, the 
elevations in the trace taken were not one- 
third as high as those in the traces of the na- 



JUG-OR-NOT'S YOUNGER BROTHER. 



127 



76 

80 

85 



73 



77 



62 



61 



60 
61 



|60 
66 

66 



Fig. 26. 



Fig. 27 



128 



MICROBES AND MEN. 




Fig. 28. 

tural pulse at the beginning of the experi- 
ment. When the second cigar was finished, 
the heart was so affected that it was running 
at the rate of 31,680 more beats per day 
than natural. The spasmodic action of the 
heart, when under the influence of tobacco, is 
nicely illustrated by some of the traces. The 
two cigars did not produce sickness. Fig. 27 
represents the pulse of I. H. 0., age, 47, 
weight, 132, during the early part of his ex- 
perience in smoking (two-thirds of) ''his first 
cigar/ ' 

The traces were taken five minutes apart, 
except the last three, each of which was taken 
fifteen minutes after the preceding one. The 
pulse rates were: 76, 80, 85, 88, 81, 73 7 77, 
67, 67, 69, 69, 61, 62, 61, 60, 60, 61, 64, 60, 
60, 66, 66. He began smoking after taking 
the first trace, and smoked about two-thirds 



JUG-OR-NOT'S YOUNGER BROTHER. 120 

of a "mild" (?) cigar during the next twenty 
minutes. Began to feel sick in five minutes ; 
much worse in ten; nausea an pallor in fifteen; 
sweating, trembling, and death-like pallor at 
the end of twenty minutes, with an "awful 
feeling in the stomach." Vomited at the end 
of the next five minutes. The trembling con- 
tinued for forty minutes after he stopped 
smoking. At the close of the experiment, 
which lasted two and one-fourth hours, the 
man was able to walk, being still pale, sick, 
and weak. He had not fully recovered the 
next day. The writer has some vivid recol- 
lections regarding this experiment — some of 
the most vivid of a life time. Fig. 22 repre- 
sents the natural pulse of the same person. 
A very careful comparison between Figs. 22 
and 27 will be of greiat value and interest. 
Fig. 28 represents the "natural" pulse of H. 
F. C. taken on five separate days. (See Figs. 
19, 20, and 26.) The first trace was taken 
one and one-half hours after smoking his last 
cigar. The second three days later. The 
third three days later. The fourth one day 
later. The fifth three days later, or ten days af- 
ter the habit of smoking three or four cigars 
daily was discontinued. The evil effects of 
even a mild form of the tobacco habit, and 
the marked and speedy recovery (of the 
young) when the habit is discontinued, is so 



130 MICROBES AND MEN. 

apparent that comments are unnecessary. 
The five traces are a most powerful and in- 
teresting object lesson. 

If society were so constituted that each 
person using the weed was compelled to en- 
joy (?) all the effects of his own habit there 
would be less reason for writing this chapter. 

Millions are more or less injured every day 
by inhaling tobacco smoke and the poison- 
ous breath of the confirmed and saturated 
tobacco inebriate. Many young children and 
a few adults have lost their lives by being 
compelled to breathe air which had been thus 
poisoned by other people. But this is not all. 
The evil effects which are always produced in 
the parent by the habitual use of tobacco 
are, to a greater or less degree, transmitted to 
his children. Dr. J. H. Kellogg, in Man, the 
Masterpiece, page 306, says: — " There is no 
vice or habit to which men are addicted, 
whose results are more certainly transmitted 
to posterity than are those of tobacco- using. 
A vigorous man may use tobacco all his life, 
and be able to convince himself all the time 
that he is receiving no injury, but the children 
of that man, who ought to inherit from him 
a vigorous constitution and high health, are 
instead robbed of their rightful patrimony, 
and enter upon life with a weakly vital 
organism, with a system predisposed to 



JUG-OR NOT'S YOUNGER BROTHER. 131 

disease and destined to premature decay. 
The sons of an inveterate tobacco-user are 
not as robust as their father; and the grand- 
children, in case the children are tobacco- 
users, are certain to be nervous, weakly, 
sickly creatures. This fact we have verified 
in so large a number of cases that we make 
the statement fully prepared to maintain it 
by indisputable facts/' 

The writer is well acquainted with a family 
in which there are four idiotic children. The 
father's excessive use of tobacco was the only 
cause of this terrible calamity that could be 
discovered when making a careful exami- 
nation of the case. He became a mental and 
physical wreck, ending his life in the poor- 
house. It is not reasonable to expect that a 
being with every tissue and cell benumbed, 
deranged, and poisoned with such a deadly 
drug as tobacco, can be the progenitor of off- 
spring, healthy in body and sound in mind. 

The following partial summary will give 
the reader only a limited idea regarding the 
extent and importance of this subject. To- 
bacco is the most poisonous product of 
nature. (Prussic acid being a manufactured 
article.) It exhausts the glands of the mouth 
and produces a dry, irritated, and inflamed 
throat. It interferes with the action of the 
stomach, producing dyspepsia. It produces 



132 MICROBES AND MEN. 

weakness of the muscular walls of the 
stomach, resulting in the enlargement of this 
important organ. It deranges both the 
structure and function of the liver. It lessens 
the ability of the lungs and red corpuscles to 
do efficient work. It stupefies the white 
corpuscles, allowing sickness to increase and 
also the number of deaths from germ diseases. 
It weakens both the nerves and muscles of 
the heart, leading to palpitation, weak heart, 
heart failure, and death. 

It weakens and deranges the brain, leading 
to nervousness, "the blues," "the horrors/' 
insanity, and suicide. It weakens every 
muscle, and deranges every organ and func- 
tion, producing languor, general debility, stu- 
pidity, carelessness, diminished activity of 
body and mind, laziness. It leads to the use 
of alcoholic liquors, and makes the reforma- 
tion of the drunkard doubly difficult, and the 
permanency of his reform very doubtful, if 
not impossible. It is a prolific cause of bron- 
chitis, consumption, cancer, impotency, deaf- 
ness, loss of sense of smell, sore eyes, short- 
sightedness, blindness, loss of voice, epilepsy, 
delirium tremens, paralysis, spinal weakness, 
death. The habitual use of tobacco stunts 
the growth of body and mind in the young, 
and causes much nervousness, unhappiness, 
and sickness among all classes. 



JUG-OR-NO T 'S YOUNGER BROTHER. 133 

The evil effects on one generation reappear 
in the next in the form of enfeebled constitu- 
tions, nervousness, ill-temper, weak-minds, 
idiocy, and insanity. Tobacco smoke, and 
the breath of the tobacco user, are poison- 
ous, leading to sickness, and sometimes death, 
when breathed by infants or others who are 
very sensitive. The tobacco habit is unsocial, 
filthy, disgusting, offnsive, and expensive, a 
nuisance without an excuse, poisonous, crim- 
inal, and deadly. It interferes with the phy- 
sical, social, financial, and moral develop- 
ment of the world. Nature never intended 
that the mouth should convey smoke, or be 
smoked, or that man should chew a cud. The 
use of tobacco is a crime against self, against 
society, and against nature. It ought not to 
be tolerated anywhere for a single day. 



IJMDEX. 



V IR-CELLS. SO. 

Alcohol, a poison. 2-4.59. 
Alcohol, affinitv for water. 

67. 
Alcohol and the brain 
Alcohol and digestion . 5 
Alcohol and the liver. 74. 
Alcohol and muscles. 41. 
Alcohol and nerves. 42. 
Alcohol and protoplasm, 43 
Alcohol and the stomach. 68 
Alcohol and the heart. 43. 

46 to 63. 
Alcohol, irritating effects ,68. 
Alcohol is excrement. 23. 
Alcoholic liquors. 45. 
Alcohol, production of. 20. 

23. 

DACTERIA. 7. 

Bacteriology. 7. 
Beer and water, 67. 
Beer and thirst. 67. 
Brain, affected bv alcohol, 
41. 100. 



C 1 



IARBOXIC acid gas. 23. 
Chart of pulse rate. 60. 
Chicken cholera. 21. 
Consumption, 13. 34. 
Corpuscle^ - ~ 
Culture, 18. 24. 



TAEATH-RATE, 16, 34. 
^ 112. 
Development. 1 
Dipsomania. 68, 112. 

rERMEXTATION. 23. 
Fatty degenerate 

pi ERM diseases, 3 3. 

TTABIT. 40. 105. 

Heart, affected bv alco- 
hol. 46 to 63. 

Heart, affected bv tobacco. 
120. 122. 132. 

Health, defined. 105. 

Heredity. 108 to 117. 

Hob-nail liver. 76. 7$. 

INCREASE, rate of. 16. 

Intoxication. 21. 
Idiocy, cause of. 112. 

T IYER. 72 

Liver and alcohol. 74. 
Liver, hob-nail. 76 ~ v 
Liver, fatty degeneration, 78 
Liquors, odors of. 24. 

A TARTIX'S experiment. 61 
"*" Micro 1 . 
Microbes, breeding of, 18. 
Microbes, color of, 10. 



136 



INDEX. 



Microbes, description, of, 9. 
Microbes, eaten by white 

corpuscles, 30. 
Microbes, excretions of, 21. 
Microbes, food of, 22. 
Microbes, number of, 11. 
Microbes, odor of, 22. 
Microbes, office of, 17. 
Microbes, reproduction of, 

11. 
Microbes, size of, 10. 
Microbes, where found, 11. 
Microbes of Anthrax, 19. 
Microbes of consumption, 

13. 
Microbes of la-grippe, 10. 
Microbes of malaria, 8. 
Microbes of typhoid fever, 

14. 

"Vf ERVES, sensitiveness of, 

1> 99, 102. 

Nerves, injured by alcohol, 

100. 
Nicotine, 118. 

DARKE'S experiment, 53. 
Personal odors, 22. 

Protoplasm, 10, 39, 41, 43. 

Ptomaines, 20. 

Pulse-chart, 60. 

Pulse, affected by alcohol, 
46 to 63. 

Pulse, affected by chloro- 
form, 52. 



Pulse, affected by tobacco, 

51, 126. 
Pulse, normal, 52. 
Pulse, traces, 46, 127. 
Pulsewriter, 44. 

"DATE of increase, 16. 

Red corpuscles, 27. 
Red corpuscles, office of, 28, 

30. 
Red corpuscles, destroyed 

by alcohol, 36. 
Reproduction, 11, 108. 



Sphygmograph, 44. 
Sphygmographic traces, 46, 

127. 
Spores, 12, 14. 

rpHIRST, 66. 
^ Tobacco, 118 to 133. 
Tobacco and growth, 121. 
Tobacco and heredity, 130. 

TTITAL resistance, 15, 31. 

TX7ATER, 64. 
* V White corpuscles, 28. 

White corpuscles, affected 
by alcohol, 35. 

White corpuscles, move- 
ments of, 29. 

White corpuscles, office of, 
30 to 38. 

VEAST, 20, 23. 



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